


Never Let Go

by Paradigmparadoxical



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BDSM, Dark One's Dagger (Once Upon a Time), F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Papa Rumplestiltskin, Rumbelle-centric, The Dark Castle (Once Upon a Time), content warnings in notes, fluffy BDSM, neither Peter Pan nor Malcolm appear in this fic, this work is complete
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:40:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 38
Words: 107,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22687900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradigmparadoxical/pseuds/Paradigmparadoxical
Summary: What if Rumplestiltskin followed Baelfire through the portal like he was supposed to?  What if (many years later) a young woman were to stumble upon (or in, or through) another path between worlds?
Relationships: Baelfire | Neal Cassidy/Morraine, Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold, Other minor pairings
Comments: 16
Kudos: 38





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The best parts of this may be attributed to the influence of killerkueen and thecompletebookworm. If not for their expert coaching, hand-holding, encouragement, long sounding-board emails, and finding a thousand things to fix, this would have stayed at a mild, fluffy four thousand words, or vanished into the dustbin. This story would not be a fraction of what it is without them.
> 
> The smut starts in chapter six and doesn't stop. If that's not your thing, please don't read.
> 
> Content warnings: Animal death (not a pet), implied/referenced past non-con, mentions of canon suicide.

[](https://64.media.tumblr.com/59b43ffd24992fc93290928d53d4b001/925154fd1f152b09-16/s1280x1920/219d41d2a4f360d917520b0eb80f62feff741216.pnj)

"Morraine, you were right!" Baelfire glanced around the busy square and held out his hand.

He was so very sweet, she thought, taking it. Just like his father used to be.

Behind the smithy, the bellows and the rhythm of iron on iron ringing in her ears, he told her.

"Another world," she said, when he'd finished. She'd never dreamed the fairy's help would mean he'd have to go away. He was her best friend, even after everything.

There was a pause. A hesitation. "Papa will be free of the magic there," he said.

'Will,' he'd said, not 'would.'

She bit her lip, looking up at him. "You're leaving."

"I'm sorry," he said, looking down at his boots. "It's the only way."

She squeezed his hand and let it go, smiling bravely. "You should," she said. "You'll get your papa back, as he was."

She remembered well the quiet, kind man who'd borne the other villagers' cruelty and scorn. Against the mercurial Dark One he'd become, the memory somehow made him seem more frightening to her, not less.

Baelfire nodded. "He's so different now," he said. "I miss him."

"I’ll miss you," she confessed in a whisper.

He caught his breath, brown eyes widening. "Me?"

She nearly laughed, if she hadn't been on the verge of tears. "Yes, you." He was leaving. What did it matter if she told him what she carried in her heart? "Who else would I marry?"

She said it lightly, as if teasing, but her voice threatened to crack.

He’d never given her cause to be afraid.

He stared at her in surprise, and she stared back, all pretense of mirth fading.

Time seemed to slow. Her heart began to pound in time to the smith's hammer. He was only fourteen. She was only fourteen.

Thirteen years, three hundred sixty-four days old seemed an eternity ago.

"Would you come with us?" he asked slowly, and this time it was she who caught her breath.

"And be your wife?"

Iron on iron--the smith's hammer paused.

In the alley behind the smithy, in the mud and the straw, the Dark One's son knelt and took her hands in his. He was only fourteen. She was only fourteen.

The war had changed her.

His thumb, ink-stained and smooth from lanolin, rubbed over her chapped fingers. He was learning to read and write, like a noble's son. His clothing was still that of a peasant's, albeit warmer than it had been.

Her sister had married last year, before they’d lowered the drafting age.

"Might I ask your father for his blessing?"

So formal, her Baelfire. He was only fourteen. She was only fourteen.

"Yes."

It was the only answer she could live with.

His smile was a beautiful thing, sunny and warm. She drew him to his feet with a relieved laugh, and he squeezed her hands.

"My father may say whatever he thinks he must," Morraine cautioned him.

Baelfire nodded, rueful and somber. "I still have to ask."

~

When Morraine was four, she’d wandered off and got lost. Rumplestiltskin found her and brought her back, but sent her to her mother’s door alone.

Skipping over rocks, she asked his name. He walked like an old man. Why did he walk like an old man?

“Rumplestiltskin,” he said with a wry smile, but didn’t answer her other question.

Was he teasing her? Outrageous. She scrunched her nose and tried to repeat the name. He might have laughed, but she wasn’t sure.

“Rum,” she decided.

His eyes crinkled; he had the beginnings of creases there.

Curious as any child, she listened when her parents spoke of their neighbors in the days that followed the incident.

A few weeks later, she saw him in the Longborne market, but he was different. He didn’t smile.

She peeked around her mother’s skirts. Was he really the same person? Perhaps she’d got his face mixed up with another.

But not the way he stood and walked, as though his leg didn't work correctly, or the notched staff he used, the marks no higher than her head.

He spoke with a woman, who responded impatiently, a boy in her arms. Morraine recognized her--Milah, and the boy was Baelfire, her friend. She knew them, but she’d never met Rumplestiltskin. Why?

Another exchange, and Milah abruptly set Baelfire down, then stormed off. Something like horror, or maybe sadness, flashed over Rumplestiltskin’s face. Milah had scared Baelfire, who hugged his father about the legs.

People passed between Morraine, her mother, and Rumplestiltskin with Baelfire. When the space cleared, Rumplestiltskin was crouched low, his hand on the back of Baelfire’s head. Baelfire nodded, and Rumplestiltskin smiled.

She hadn’t been mistaken then. She wanted to say hello. She tugged her mother’s hand.

Mother looked where Morraine pointed, and frowned. “When did you meet Rumplestiltskin?” she asked.

There was something in her tone that warned Morraine. Mother wasn’t happy.

“When I got lost,” she said, puzzled.

Mother glanced about, and clutched Morraine’s hand. Mother was afraid, and Morraine didn’t know why.

That night, under woven blankets with her sister, their parents’ whispered conversation carried.

“...brought her back.”

Daddy blew out the candle. She heard him moving in the dark.

“...didn’t know it was him,” he sighed.

There was a murmur, a rustle of blankets.

“We can’t let her be seen near him,” Mother said.

Why not? Morraine wanted to know.

Daddy grumbled. “That war was a mess, and everyone knew it.”

Mother huffed, but Morraine’s eyes were growing heavy, and she heard no more.

~

Milah died, and Baelfire was sad.

The roof was leaking.

Baelfire’s roof leaked, too. The thatching had been recoated with new straw in the same year.

Daddy said it was time, but it would have to wait until after harvest. They would need fresh straw that hadn’t been mangled in the threshing.

“Who helped you last time?” Mother asked, replacing a bucket in the corner.

Daddy sighed, took the full one from her. “Rumplestiltskin.”

Mother frowned, watched him pitch the water outside, into the rushing rain.

Morraine closed the door.

Daddy set the bucket down.

Mother wavered, asked, “He won’t be able to climb that, will he?”

Daddy didn’t answer for a moment. Then, “I think he’ll try.”

Mother checked another corner, a cooking pot. “We may need help if we are to finish before sunset.”

Daddy caught her hand. She paused.

“No one has to see it as anything,” Daddy said.

~

The green plants were greener after a rain.

Baelfire wanted to show her a new game he’d learned, but they didn’t go far.

“Me?” Rumplestiltskin asked. His trousers were wet. So was his tunic.

Daddy said, “It will go faster, that way.”

~

The roofs were thatched, and did not leak.

Her family was dry that winter.

“It’s silly to take the fleece to market when we could trade it here,” Mother said.

They sold thread and woven goods in Longbourne that year, and no fleece.

~

The soldiers were looking for someone. They found Rumplestiltskin instead.

That night, Baelfire answered her soft tapping on the door. She slipped inside, a laden basket on her arm.

Bewildered, he took it from her; the scent of her mother’s stew rose from beneath its covering cloth.

The hearth was cold; no coals glowed beneath their cooking-pot.

“Papa is sick,” he said, and it was the kind of lie one wasn’t expected to believe, but merely pretend to accept.

“No one saw me,” she replied.

She washed the bowls before going to bed; her family would need them in the morning.

~

Morraine had said her goodbyes before the betrothal. It was a terrible thing she had done, to leave so suddenly.

_We always knew we would lose Morrie when she married,_ Daddy said, _but she wouldn’t have been gone, not like this_.

It was almost as though she’d died.

Baelfire's hand held hers, their feet rustling in the dry leaves of the clearing they entered. Her future father-in-law walked with them, opposite Baelfire.

She'd never seen the Dark One so ill-at-ease since before he'd gained his magic. He twitched at every little thing. If she didn't know better, she'd think him afraid.

Baelfire grasped Rumplestiltskin's hand in his. "It will be all right," he said, the child reassuring the parent.

"Of course it will," he replied, a small smile on his lips. He fidgeted with the staff he carried, swinging it gently like a toy. He didn't need it, not now, but he had before the magic, and surely would again.

If they made it to this new land. There was always the chance the fairy's bean wouldn't work. She prayed it did.

Baelfire came to a halt in the middle of the clearing. "Ready?" he asked softly.

She saw the Dark One squeeze his hand in reply.

"Don't let go," Rumplestiltskin said.

~

She'd thought they were falling. She'd closed her eyes against a swirl of colored lights, and opened them to find cobbles under her hands.

Cobbles.

"Bae!" she heard Rumplestiltskin's voice to her left. It hadn't been that deep in months.

"Papa?" Baelfire asked.

She turned in time to see Baelfire throw himself into his father's arms. A muffled "oof" followed, but his father said nothing, embracing him just as tightly.

It was dark here, wherever they were. It must be the middle of the night. She looked around, straining to pick up some detail that would tell her anything about the new land they found themselves in.

For it indubitably was a different land. Although Rumplestiltskin had his face buried in his son's dark curls, the little she could see appeared human.

She eyed their surroundings with trepidation. Night was never a good time to be caught out-of-doors in a strange place. They still had their things, which was a blessing. All three bore heavy purses at their belts, laden with a king's ransom in gold and gems. She feared such would not remain the case if they did not find shelter soon.

~

Rumplestiltskin let out a yelp when he climbed to his feet. Or tried to climb. Baelfire caught him before he could fall, and Morraine fetched him his staff.

"I'd nearly forgotten that," the former Dark One muttered, his eyes downcast. He shifted his slight weight off of his bad leg and avoided her gaze.

Baelfire wrapped an arm around his waist. "None of that," he chided, as they moved off down the street, Morraine following beside them. "No one here knows anything about us," he reminded his father. "We can make a fresh start."

"Won't people think we stole these things?" Morraine asked, searching the next street with her eyes.

Rumplestiltskin frowned. "They might," he agreed thoughtfully. "If we tried to sell them all at once."

~

"May I help you?" the young man at the desk queried. Morraine could see him struggle to maintain a neutral expression. They must look strange to him. There was no way to anticipate the clothing styles or customs of the people in this land. She only hoped they wouldn't attract the wrong kind of attention.

"My family and I were in town for a costume party," Rumplestiltskin said, feigning embarrassment. He tugged off a ring he'd donned just before entering the building. "And I'm afraid I lost some of my things... in the carriage, I think.

"We're really very tired, and I was hoping--" he held out the ring, which sparkled richly in the lamplight.

The clerk's eyes widened. "Of course! Such a predicament is entirely too common even for our most valued guests." He scrabbled in a drawer, and came up with a sheet of paper, which he laid on the counter. "A piece like that is surely worth much more than--" he broke off, uncertain, then said as if reciting from a script, "We'd be happy to accept it as collateral, and in the morning one of our staff can accompany you to any number of reputable establishments in the city. Many can even hold the piece, for a fee, if it has sentimental value?"

Rumplestiltskin blinked, then shook his head.

"Excellent! If you'd just read and sign right here--" he marked an 'X' on the sheet "--we can provide you with your choice of accommodations, and anything else you might require."

~

"They speak the same language here!" Baelfire exclaimed the moment the door of their suite was safely shut. "How is that possible, Papa?"

Rumplestiltskin smiled, the stiff set to his shoulders relaxing. "Magic is often strange, Bae. I am merely thankful to have my family safe."

Morraine started, and Baelfire grinned. Had Rumplestiltskin meant to call her family?

"We should try to sleep," Rumplestiltskin said. "Morning will come early here. Tomorrow, lessons. You both must be able to read, or the people of this land will think us frauds."

"Yes, Papa."

"Aye, shoo."

~


	2. Chapter 2

Mr. Darling, of Darling Gems, placed his loupe upon the counter and gave Rumplestiltskin quite the odd look. “Where did you say you’d got these?”

Rumplestiltskin felt a chill creep over him. How was he to sell any of the gems and provide for his family if he was in prison or dead because someone thought he’d stolen them? He knew no one in this land, had no references of any kind. He hadn’t felt this worthless since before he’d gained his magic.

“I didn’t,” he replied. He didn’t belong here, in this clean shop with its gleaming surfaces and fine rugs, not to mention the wealth on display in the cases.

Mr. Darling removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “Mr.--”

“Gold,” Rumplestiltskin said, resigned.

“Mr. Gold. I cannot buy stolen goods. I could lose my livelihood.”

“They’re nae--”

“Can you prove it?”

There was silence.

“Take them, and I won’t inform Scotland Yard as soon as you’re out the door,” the man said.

His shoulders drooping, Rumplestiltskin scooped up the gems and hobbled towards the door, the cane the hotel staff had found for him a few days ago thumping softly across the plush rug in a jolting, unaccustomed motion. Such was his dismay that he failed to see the small mirror on the counter until he’d bumped it and it was falling to the ground.

The mirror shattered; he tripped over its frame, crashing to the floor. Fire lanced up his bad leg.

Distantly, he heard the proprietor cursing. Darling rolled him over, and a heavy shard of glass fell from his flesh, tearing the wound further as it went.

Rumplestiltskin gasped at the pain. It throbbed and burned, pushing blood out to seep into the expensive wool under him.

More cursing. “Don’t move,” Darling ordered. He was back shortly with a box and a bottle, pulling away Rumplestiltskin’s trousers. He stripped off the shoe and the remains of his sock with brisk efficiency.

Then Darling poured the contents of the bottle over the gash.

It burned, deep inside. Rumplestiltskin made a sound he’d never confess to as long as he lived. He tried to pull away, but Darling was ready for him, and held him fast.

Eventually it subsided. Rumplestiltskin stared at the ceiling, tried to count the slats. Tried to breathe.

“This isn’t as bad as I thought,” Darling said. He blotted the area with a cloth and searched for the end of the bandage roll he held.

Rumplestiltskin shook his head. “I kin dae that,” he grunted, propping himself up on his elbows.

“No!” Darling snapped. He glared at Rumplestiltskin. “You aren’t making more of a mess in my shop.”

Rumplestiltskin huffed and drug himself into a sitting position.

Darling got the end of the bandage unwrapped, and picked up Rumplestiltskin’s foot to prop it between his knees.

He stopped. Stared. “What are you?” he breathed.

No matter how many times he heard it, it still stung. “I’m a bloody cripple,” Rumplestiltskin snarled. He tried again to pull away, his gaze falling on the latticework of scars covering his ruined foot.

On the cut that was rapidly closing.

Well. That was a surprise. There wasn’t supposed to be any magic here.

His eyes met Mr. Darling’s, only for Darling to drop his gaze to Rumplestiltskin’s foot. “Why didn’t the rest of you heal?” he asked.

He shrugged. “Bones were in the wrong place, I suppose.”

“What happened?”

“A seer,” he quipped, wondering how far he could push this man before he was declared insane.

Darling looked up at him. “A seer… did that.”

“Vicious woman.”

Darling waited.

“She told me that my actions on the battlefield would leave my son fatherless,” he said tonelessly. “So I smashed my foot with a mallet.”

Darling winced. “You deserted.”

Rumplestiltskin stiffened. He snatched his foot from Darling’s grasp and fumbled for his shoe. “I’ll be on my way.”

He dug the gems out of his pocket and gave them to Darling. “Take them, all right? I’ve ruint your rug. I swear they’re nae stolen.”

Darling weighed them in his bloodstained hand. “What are you doing selling rubies?”

Rumplestiltskin struggled with his mangled sock. It was soaked and sticky. “Trying to feed my family,” he muttered.

There was silence while Rumplestiltskin worked his shoe onto his twisted foot.

Darling seemed to come to a decision. “Mr… Gold,” he said hesitantly.

Rumplestiltskin glared at him.

“I’m sorry.”

He blinked. “You’re wot?”

He couldn’t have heard that correctly.

“I’m sorry I’ve caused such great offence,” Darling said. “I need… a shop assistant. My wife has been ill, and--”

“You want _me_ to help you in your jewellry shop,” Rumplestiltskin said slowly. He was the son of a crook; he had no place here.

The other man nodded.

“Why?”

Darling shook his head and rolled to his feet. He offered Rumplestiltskin a hand up. “Call it curiosity,” he said.

~

They soon settled into a small townhouse near Oxford Street.

Morraine and Baelfire explored the city by day, found bookshops and markets, discovered maps and the trades of their new land. They brought home books and other printed works, a primer used by children, ink and paper for writing.

This land was a puzzle, Morraine said. She and Baelfire would make sense of it, one way or another.

He could find a tutor, Rumplestiltskin offered.

Reserved around him still, Morraine looked to Baelfire. A speaking glance passed between the two of them.

Not yet, Baelfire said.

Morraine agreed. It's fun now, this way. Like an adventure.

Peasants had no time for adventures.

On most evenings, Rumplestiltskin and his family read those books aloud. They all had leagues to go. Primary schooling was compulsory in London, Darling told him. Fortunately, both Baelfire and Morraine were past the age where they would fall under any official scrutiny.

Unfortunately, it meant that future employment options would be limited until they could bridge the gap.

Rumplestiltskin’s inherited memories were of little help. No voices haunted him here, their gloved malice a welcome absence. He remembered only things that other Dark Ones had seen and heard, the texture of pages on skin not his own, the scent of dry paper or parchment, sometimes the shape of the letters. Their meaning was lost to him.

Memory decayed, even for the Dark Ones, though not to the same extent. Without the meaning of the words attached, the detail failed to carry. He was no more literate than he'd been.

His aunts had taught him the rudiments, but leisure time was as scarce as books were for peasants.

A parlour on the ground floor became their schoolroom. Morraine’s chin would tuck over Baelfire’s shoulder, her eyes on the printed words. They chose subjects that interested them. Morraine, having had less practice, was the least certain of the three.

Rumplestiltskin acquired a spinning wheel. He missed the feel of fibre between his fingers, the way his mind could drift, his hands content.

Had anyone glanced in of an evening, they surely would have found the sight odd. Spinning was an occupation of the poorest of the poor, seldom paired with the sound of pages turning in warm lamplight, nor voices rising and falling with the inflection of a tale not yet learned.

The way words were spoken by someone who knew their direction was different than words whose story was spelled out in fits and starts. 

He wasn’t exempt, his son informed him with a grin. That he was the fastest reader of the three pulled him back into their circle when he would have retreated. Morraine wanted to hear the end of the chapter, she claimed.

~

Darling helped him to liquidate some of the gems, enough to keep his family comfortable. People would start asking questions, he said, if too many began to flood the market.

There were a few, however, that stumped him.

“What are these?” the jeweller asked, rolling them with a pair of tweezers. They were perfectly spherical, with a centre that shone like faceted diamonds.

“Hmm? Ozilite.”

Darling looked up at him. “You can’t sell these, Gold. Hell, you can’t even show them to anyone else, ever.”

“That rare?”

Darling laughed. “Unheard of. Downright dangerous, mate.” He picked up his loupe, examining the ozilites through the lens in fascination. “Do you know the planes inside here meet perfectly? Razor sharp.

“Here--” he passed the loupe over, showing Rumplestiltskin where to place it best. The heavy lens magnified the gems many times. “The quality of a cut is determined by the precision with which those planes meet.”

The ozilites were pretty enough without the lens; they sparkled like tiny stars in their velvet tray. This was something else entirely.

Darling grinned. “Most people don’t get to see the gems close up.”

His clock began to chime the hour, a clear, bright sound. He blinked in surprise.

“Already?”

The shop’s sign flipped, the door locked, Rumplestiltskin helped him to load his stock into a safe in the back of the shop. Nothing got left out at night.

Darling didn’t watch him anymore.

“How is Mary doing?” he asked.

“Better!” Darling said. He lit up like a boy, then, “The shop’s closed tomorrow. She wants to meet you.”

“Me?”

Why would she want to meet him?

“And your family,” Darling amended.

He’d only just met the man. There was nothing for it but to ask.

“Why?”

Darling shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve never kept anything from her before. I’d like to be able to tell her.”

Darling wanted his permission? He must have seen the confusion on Rumplestiltskin’s face, for he said, as though it were obvious,

“It’s not my story to tell.”

Rumplestiltskin shook his head. “As long as I don’t have to break any mirrors.”

~

Mary--she insisted Morraine, Baelfire and he call her Mary--had been ill for a long time. She and George had a daughter about Baelfire and Morraine’s age, and two small boys. They and Mary thought Morraine was Baelfire’s sister.

Baelfire blushed to the roots of his hair. “It was the only way Morrie’s parents would let her come with us,” he said with admirable composure.

Young women in this land did _not_ marry at fourteen. Not commonly, at least not in urban areas like London.

“What was?” Mary asked.

“We won’t be getting married for some time,” Baelfire attempted to assure her.

Mary looked from Morraine to her own daughter, and back again.

“When they are ready,” Rumplestiltskin said. The topic of marriage was pitted with hazards in any place he’d ever known. It made sense that here would be no exception.

At last she inquired, “Where are you from?”

Their story was too fantastic to be believed, the parts he deemed safe to tell. Bleeding at the table was frowned upon, George whispered.

It was the sincerity of that hushed argument between George and he that seemed to convince Mary, although she gave her husband a look that clearly said, ‘later.’

~

It was over pudding that Rumplestiltskin asked after the various trades in this land.

Mary smiled. “What do you want to do?”

Baelfire and Morraine exchanged glances. They had choices. They could do nearly anything.

“I hope this does not mean I’d be losing you,” George said.

Startled, Rumplestiltskin blinked. “You want me to stay?”

George _humph_ ed. “It takes three times as long to show someone as it does to do a thing yourself. I should like to think I’d get something out of it.”

~

The Darlings’ governess shooed the two boys off to bed soon after. Wendy stayed, her questions eager.

“But that must be so exciting!” she exclaimed.

Morraine tilted her head. Rumplestiltskin knew her well enough by now to suspect that she was eyeing the girl strangely, under cover of her lashes.

“Not really,” Baelfire said. “Magic isn’t… an easy thing.”

“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” Morraine added softly.

“You’re _here_ ,” Wendy protested. “From another land. That’s amazing!”

“We came here to get away from magic,” Baelfire replied. “It nearly destroyed us.”

“What does it do?” Mary asked, with a quelling look at her daughter.

“It hides its price,” Rumplestiltskin said, his eyes downcast. “It sounds easy, but it’s not.”

His tone gave Wendy pause.

“Is there really no magic in our world at all?” She sounded disappointed.

“Fairies don’t lie,” Morraine said confidently, and Rumplestiltskin's stomach knotted.

He set his fork down with a small _click_.

Morraine frowned. “Don’t they?”

“Fairies are real?” Wendy asked. They hadn’t told that part of the story.

“They’re real,” Baelfire assured her, then, “Papa?”

He felt sick. What had he done? He’d seen no evidence of magic here, but that meant nothing. He had nothing with which to protect his family. Again.

George was watching him.

He swallowed. “Yes, fairies lie, when it suits them.”

~

It was a quiet group that made their way home, later that night. Safely inside, Baelfire bumped his shoulder with his.

“I’m glad we came here,” he said. “I got my papa back.”

Rumplestiltskin’s eyes stung. “For how long?” he asked. “Bae, I canna protect you here!”

“As much as anyone else,” his son argued. “I have you.”

He shook his head. Baelfire let him wrap him in his arms and pull him close, his tousled hair comforting under his chin.

~

There were always two workbenches in a jewellry establishment, Darling said, even when there was only one person using them. Gold had a higher melting point than silver, and mixing microscopic bits of the two metals could result in corruption of their function.

He showed him a piece where it had happened. The metal was pitted, not at all attractive. It would have to be melted later to separate the two.

Separate tools, separate benches. He taught Rumplestiltskin the silver first.

The sale of finished pieces was only part of Darling’s work. He cleaned them, repaired them, resized them, changed out the stones as needed, and sold unset stones in their place.

Some shops dealt only in gold, or only in silver. It was simpler, but limiting in terms of clientele.

~

One evening, weeks after they’d arrived, Baelfire watched Morraine leave them after supper, a book in her hand.

“Morrie seems different, since she returned from the front,” he said, sounding puzzled.

Rumplestiltskin felt his heart sink. He’d been wondering when his son would notice.

There was a lovely park nearby. Morraine waved when he told her they were going out, already immersed in the pages.

There weren’t many people around, but he spoke in a low voice when he said, “Do you remember that knight I killed, Hordor?”

He couldn’t say it without revulsion.

Baelfire frowned. “Of course.”

His son had been appalled. He hadn’t known. He’d been too young to know.

Not any longer.

“When he said that your mother could not stand to look at me….” He swallowed, the memory of that day like acid in his throat. “That wasn’t all of it.”

Baelfire’s eyes were very wide. He slipped his hand into his.

There was no one around to see him so affectionate with his father. Men here were strange. They behaved as though simple things would damage their reputation somehow.

“Your mother could not look at me in front of _him_ , even before the war. I wasn’t able to protect her.”

He’d chosen their son over following his peers into suicide. She never forgave him for it.

“So when he asked me when my birthday was…?”

Death was too good for that monster. There had been a second question behind the first.

Rumplestiltskin shook his head. “There was no way to know.”

Baelfire was far from the only child of the Frontlands to question his parentage; his son only squeezed his hand.

Rumplestiltskin added this day to the man’s crimes. Because of him, he couldn’t allow Baelfire to remain in ignorance. His stomach churned at the idea of telling him, so he turned them toward a grove of oaks and bushes, and instead asked him about the day Morraine had been taken away.

“Bae, just before Morrie’s mother tried to stab him, what did he say?”

Baelfire seemed to think he’d changed the subject, but replied, “He said.…” he trailed off then, green with nausea.

“He said that Morraine would ‘ride with’ him,” he finished Baelfire’s answer.

There was a flash of denial, and then his son was lurching for the bushes.

Rumplestiltskin followed, and held him while he shook. He wished he could kill that man again. Snapping his neck had been far too quick.

Everyone else in the village had known of Hordor’s proclivities. When one lived cheek by jowl with one’s neighbours like they had, secrets were as rare as privacy, unless one were a child with ears too young for the tale.

It would be reasonable for Morraine to think that Baelfire knew as well.

“Morrie?” Baelfire’s voice cracked.

Rumplestiltskin pulled him away from the reeking mess. “Morraine needs you to know,” he said. “She doesn’t want you to know--”

Baelfire frowned.

“--but she needs you to.”

“Why?” he croaked.

Rumplestiltskin wasn’t sure which ‘why’ his son meant, but he set his hands on his shoulders and replied, “Because it is not her shame.”

Slowly, Baelfire said, “She thinks it is.”

~

When they returned to the townhouse, they found Morraine reading alone in the parlour. She looked up at the sound of the door.

It was early yet, but Baelfire bid her goodnight, kissed her cheek and drew away.

Morraine watched him go, took in Rumplestiltskin's slumped shoulders, and said,

“He didn’t know, did he?”

Caught out, Rumplestiltskin shifted, the urge to flee unbearable. His leg ached, deep bruising of misaligned bones not yet subsided. Morraine seemed so very young, in that moment, playing with a thread that marked her place in her book.

He approached her slowly, perching gingerly on the edge of a chair nearby. He had failed Milah in the aftermath. He was no wiser now than he had been then, even after everything.

“I'm afraid,” she whispered.

Was it easier to admit that to a man who was known as a coward?

“Of Bae?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Of any… most... I don't know.”

“He will give you time,” he said, and hoped it was right.

They had no way of knowing how much time they would have.

~

Mary Darling took a turn for the worse several months later.

Rumplestiltskin brought his family and sat with George through the long night. Baelfire and Morriane huddled with Wendy, John and Michael in the Darling’s nursery.

Mary was dying, and George could no longer hide it even from Michael.

Desperate for distraction over the last few days, the children told each other stories.

~

There was a crash from the nursery the next morning.

George met Rumplestiltskin in the hall.

“They’re gone,” George said. “All of them.”

The window was open.

Upon the windowsill, a child’s doll lay, its body made of straw.

~

George deserved to know.

He told George what that innocent token meant.

There was a cold, heartbroken silence.

“Get out.”

~

Mary succumbed to her illness soon after her children disappeared. George buried her in a double plot near their home.

Rumplestiltskin scoured Europe for any information on magic in this land. The memory of the day Baelfire had shown him that bean haunted him. There was no magic here--that had been the point.

He couldn’t escape the magic, therefore there had to be something, here where there was supposed to be none.

Folklore, mythology, superstition--he ransacked the written works of the English-speaking world, then progressed to other languages, countries, cultures. 

George never moved from the townhouse in London. If his children were to someday return, he said, they must be able to find him.

They kept in touch, despite everything. While George wanted nothing to do with him, one of them might someday discover something useful.

Their strained communication paid off. Twenty years after the children disappeared, Rumplestiltskin was roused in the middle of the night by a loud pounding on his door.

George didn’t do midnight road trips any more than he got roaring drunk or went running starkers down Oxford Street. He’d driven through the night to find him.

He’d got a letter in the post. It was written with what may have been a stick on newsprint that had been washed of its original ink and carefully dried. The new ink was blotted but legible.

Letters, plural. There were four others tucked inside, each written on the same grey paper. Wendy, John, Michael, Baelfire, Morraine.

The envelope, neatly folded from more newsprint, bore no return address.

Rumplestiltskin opened his son’s letter with shaking hands.

~

When he had absorbed all he could of Baelfire and Morraine’s letters, he refolded them and set them aside, lest his damp cheeks damage the precious contents.

Defeat and hope mingled in the air between George and he. George’s hand reached for his across the gap.

George hated him.

George was a good man, and he a monster for bringing ruin to his family.

Rumplestiltskin grasped his hand like a lifeline. “Forgive me,” he whispered, his head hanging over their hands. The paper would have been smeared by now.

George growled and pulled him into an embrace, let him soak the shoulder of his bespoke shirt. “It’s not as though you meant to,” he grumbled.

~

It had taken John and Michael all of those twenty years to find the first British postage stamp, then post the letter inside Britain. They didn’t know how to address it if it were sent over international lines.

John’s letter laid out places George and Rumplestiltskin could leave their replies. Sometimes either he or Michael could get away in the cities, he said. One of them worked on whatever it was Pan wanted, while the other slipped off to check the arranged location.

Sometimes as much as a year would go by before Rumplestiltskin and George would get a reply. He and George lived for those letters.

They looked of an equal age now, as though they’d been born in the same era and not a decade or more apart. George said that someone would notice, eventually, if he remained in one place for too long.

He and George survived the Great Depression. What were gems when no one could buy them? To say that they’d survived was the most anyone could ask for.

The Second War came and went. Rumplestiltskin buried George’s remains in the plot next to Mary, where John and Michael could find him.

He added more cities to his roster, and opened a succession of shops in the States: Detroit, Michigan; Richmond, Virginia; Buffalo, New York; Maine.

In those years he hid letters in train stations. Near the tunnels that housed the roaring monstrosities that ran below ground in many cities, the large automated machines that sold farecards or tokens were seldom moved, and the spaces between they and the walls were never cleaned.

The first station in the alphabet in any given city, the easternmost entrance, the first machine on the right.

Rumplestiltskin soon knew the train systems of every city in America and Canada, even though he never left his destination for the ground above.

~

It was while he was checking and adding to one of these caches that John found him.

“Rumplestiltskin?” a boy asked him.

His heart stuttered to a halt. He hadn’t heard his full name in a hundred years. Not even George had called him that.

The boy was about eighteen, redheaded, with thick glasses that looked as though they’d taken a few too many hits.

“John,” he breathed.

The boy glanced over his shoulder. “I can’t stay. The Shadow doesn’t know I’m away.” Solemn-faced, he held out his hand. “Letters?”

“Tell him I love him?” He placed the bundle in John’s grasp.

John passed over a creased envelope, clasped his hand, and was gone.

Rumplestiltskin watched the empty stairwell for a long time.

~

He’d been in Maine for a decade when there was another knock upon his door.

He’d buried George over fifty years ago. There was no one left.

His son, Morraine, and Wendy looked exactly as he’d seen them last, down to the frilly nightdresses on the girls and the pyjamas Baelfire wore. John and Michael were older than the others, and sported the costumes of some unheard-of other world.

Rumplestiltskin would not have hallucinated something like this. Hallucinations were nightmares come to life. He couldn’t hallucinate; his metabolism didn’t allow for it.

Apparently, he could lose consciousness just like anyone else.

~


	3. Chapter 3

In the Enchanted Forest, many years and quite a few generations after the three had left, a young woman stopped to listen for her pursuers. She leaned against a thick, gnarled tree, her muscles watery with exhaustion. She’d lost all track of time, but it felt as if she'd been running for hours.

Only birdsong met her ears, and the rustling of a squirrel nearby. The tree she leant against was old and hollow, and upon investigation bigger inside that it first appeared. It was also uninhabited.

She was so tired.

~

"Miss? Are you all right?" a woman's voice asked.

Belle jumped and flailed, woken from a sound sleep. She'd only meant to close her eyes for a moment.

"Hey, no," the woman soothed in response to her fear. She shifted the baby on her hip and held out a hand to help Belle from her hiding place.

Belle took it warily, wondering why she wasn’t being driven away from here. People guarded their corners of the land jealously now. Whatever refuge was to be found only supported so many people before its resources were drained.

What did this woman want from her?

As she stood, she caught sight of the tree she'd entered. It was much smaller than it had been, and there were bits of bark and wood chips littering the ground, almost as if they’d been knocked from the hollow she’d woken in. How odd.

"I'm sorry," she said, once she'd regained her feet. Everything hurt; she’d never been so sore. "Someone was following me, and-"

She broke off suddenly. A low hum had begun in the distance, becoming louder by the second.

Nothing good could come of noise like that. The ogres would hear.

The hum grew louder, until it seemed to pass them, and then began to recede.

With nowhere to hide, Belle could scarcely breathe.

Unfazed, the woman watched her curiously, as though the sound were common, or possessed little significance.

Come to it, her clothing was rather odd as well, Belle’s panicked brain chattered irrelevantly--trousers on a woman! And was that a house only a stone's throw away? it persisted. She would have seen a building so large, surely. Perhaps she'd been more tired than she'd thought.

Perhaps she’d stumbled into one of those rare places where the ogres did not venture. She’d thought they were myth, or separated by oceans, or desert, or winters inhospitable to humans and ogres both.

She would have known if she’d come near any of those.

The woman now studied her with a focused intensity that seemed incongruous with a chance meeting.

Slowly Belle said, “Aren’t… you worried about the ogres?”

The woman blinked. "No! Not at all. We haven’t had to worry about ogres here for a long time.”

Where was she?

"I'm Morraine,” the woman said. “This is Evan. Look, it's going to rain." The air did indeed feel heavy, a cold wind picking up by the minute. "Why don't you come in for tea?"

~

They made it inside a rambling, comfortable-looking cabin built into a hillside just as the first few drops of rain started to fall.

The room they entered was a large open space lit by a warm fire in the hearth. At Morraine's invitation, Belle gravitated to it, wondering at the wealth on display. An intricate but sturdy wrought-iron screen guarded the area from curious explorers. A fine porcelain tea service occupied a ledge to the side, and before long its pot was steeping, filling the room with a heavenly aroma.

Belle’s stomach grumbled.

The shelves surrounding the fireplace were filled with books, more than she had seen since the ruin of her town, if then. There were so many! She tore herself away; it would not do to become so distracted in a strange place.

And it was so very strange.

It was as though she’d stepped back in time, with a few extra oddities. A home like this would have been smashed by the ogres long ago. The infrastructure required to make some of the things she saw simply did not exist anymore.

If it ever had. Glass was everywhere, impossibly large sheets of it, in tall windows and in picture frames. One exceptionally large frame over the mantle held no image, only a black sheet of yet more flawless glass, too dark to be a mirror.

Were the people who lived here sorcerers?

The door opened, and a man entered, followed by one whose shoulder-length hair was touched with silver, and a little girl of about nine. All were rather damp.

The first man stopped in surprise, and the other nearly stumbled into him.

"Hello," he said.

The man behind him laughed. "Morrie, why ist tha a hole in ma tree ootside?"

"You're wet!" Morraine cried, instead of answering. She shooed them toward the fire, then said, "Bae, Rum, Jaime, I'd like you to meet Belle," she said, and Belle had the distinct impression that she was laughing at the two men. "Belle, my husband, Baelfire; our eldest, Jaime; and my father-in-law, Rumplestiltskin. Ian is in the other room napping."

The older man twitched, as though unused to hearing his name, but he and his son returned her curtsey with polite bows, the son a beat behind his father. The little girl imitated her with a wobble. Belle would later learn that such gestures were rather antiquated here, but for now she remained in relative ignorance. She did wonder, however, why someone would name their child after the Dark One who'd disappeared so many generations ago. It seemed a cruel thing to do.

"Welcome to our home, miss Belle," Rumplestiltskin said. He and his son helped the little girl out of her coat, then began removing their own soaked outerwear and hanging it on pegs along the mantle.

To Morraine, "You haven't called me that in quite some time, my dear."

He paused when she touched his shoulder.

"She's from our land," Morraine informed him quietly.

Both men stilled. They turned to look at Belle, Baelfire in the middle of unwrapping a scarf made of finest wool.

"The tree?" Rumplestiltskin asked, after a moment. Belle thought his shirt might be linen; it was densely woven in dark blue, the stitching nearly invisible.

"She wears my mother's brooch," Morraine replied.

"I--I'm sorry..." Belle stammered, placing a hand over the brooch she wore. It was rather unique, if of modest size and material. “I don't understand."

All three spoke with the accent of the Frontlands, the burr thickest in the father's speech before he’d discovered a stranger present, but the spinning-wheel cameo brooch had been _her_ mother's, then in Belle's possession since she was a child. Morraine was scarcely older than herself, she couldn't possibly--

"It's a long story," Rumplestiltskin said. 

"Is that your chamomile blend?" Baelfire asked with sudden cheer. He hung his scarf from a peg and stole a kiss from his wife.

"It is. Did you bring those pasties from town?"

"Baker's dozen of Maine’s best," he said, holding out a bag made from a strange smooth material.

"Dry too. Marta is amazing. Stoke up the fire for me? I'll grab plates."

"Miss?" Rumplestiltskin asked. He offered her a half-smile and a cup of tea, his speech now careful and precise. "Would you do me the honor of joining us?"

"Thank you, sir," she replied, taking the tea from him. She sat in the chair he indicated, then watched while the others gathered.

They were affectionate with each other, she thought. Baelfire took Evan from his wife to settle him in Rumplestiltskin's lap. Quiet words passed, Baelfire's answer taking on its own lilt in response.

Morraine brought pastries on plates to a low table between them, then took her seat on an upholstered settee with her daughter and her husband, who wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pressed a kiss into her hair.

~

There was a comfortable silence for a time, while they ate and the tea cooled, and Belle tried not to show just how hungry she really was. She clutched her cup and breathed in the steam, then--

"My mother wore that brooch," Morraine began, "or one very like it, on the day I said goodbye to her, over one hundred years ago."

Belle's mouth fell open, and she set her cup in its saucer before she could drop it. "One hundred?"

Morraine smiled sadly. "It is probably more like two hundred for us, but we cannot be sure. We--Baelfire, Wendy, and I, spent quite a long time in Neverland, before we escaped from Pan. No one ages there, and time runs faster. Although--" she frowned, "--I’ve often wondered how much time has passed in the Enchanted Forest.

"So you see," she said, "we weren't accusing you of anything, but wondering if you might be some sort of relation to my sister and I. Unless some grave misfortune befell them, my family should never have had cause to sell that brooch. My father-in-law-" she nodded to Rumplestiltskin, "paid my father a bride-price fit for royalty, even though I was only a peasant."

"The very same day we left," her husband added.

Evan watched Belle contentedly from Rumplestiltskin's lap, his fingers in his mouth. A small patch of drool began to form on his grandfather’s shirt, the blue darkening to nearly black.

Frowning, Belle cast her gaze between the couple on the settee. Their story was beginning to sound oddly familiar.

The man known as Rumplestiltskin shrugged, that half-smile making a reappearance. "She was marrying my son," he said. "Nothing else would suit."

Belle knew the story of the brooch, passed down through generations. She knew who the Dark One was, what his name was, even though he had only held the power for a few months… before taking away her many-times-great-great-grandmother’s sister, never to be seen or heard from over the three centuries of war since.

Until now.

He saw the moment she made sense of the riddle they presented, but was too far to catch the cup as it tumbled from her fingers. The saucer slid safely down her long skirt to rattle onto the floor. Distantly, she heard a telltale "chink" as the cup met a leg of the sturdy table between them.

She hardly heard Baelfire getting up to fetch a cloth, so preoccupied was she with staring wide-eyed at his father.

"You're not _named_ for Rumplestiltskin," she said slowly.

The Dark One's eyebrows shot up. "Whyever would anyone dae that?"

"Papa!" his son scolded. He held her dropped cup in his hand, and Belle looked down to see the mess she'd made.

"I'm so sorry!" she cried, taking the cup from him to examine the rim. “It's chipped."

Baelfire only shook his head, making room for his daughter, who brought her a fresh cup with an uncertain smile.

"It's just a cup," his father said.

"Right," she said, setting it on the table and thanking the little girl. She left the new one there as well, not trusting herself with more porcelain at the moment.

Rumplestiltskin passed the baby to Jaime and rose with a sigh. Belle now saw that he walked with the aid of a cane, knotted wood about the handle lending subtle patterns to its surface. She wondered at it, how a magical being like the Dark One of her family’s legend could need anything of the sort.

With a glance of apology to her and his granddaughter, he moved her dishes down the table and perched on the edge with a badly-concealed wince.

Gently, he took her hands in his, and she knew she couldn't hide their tremble.

Rumplestiltskin studied her, and she found his eyes were a rich, almost amber, brown. "I've frightened you," he said.

She mustered her courage, denied any such thing. "You've been nothing but kind," she said, and realised it was true. Until she'd discovered his identity, she'd felt no reason to fear him.

"Still--I must tell you, and it's no’ a great secret. I don't... have my magic here."

Her eyes widened. Was he just an ordinary man, then? But something else caught her attention.

"Here?"

"It's why we came here," Baelfire spoke up. "This is a land without magic."

"The magic changed me," Rumplestiltskin said softly, as if ashamed. "I sought the magic to save my son, but it made me into a monster. I would have lost him." His voice cracked. "I nearly did."

"But you didn't," his son said. He scooted forward to squeeze his father's shoulder. "And you won't."

Belle glanced between the two, observing the way Rumplestiltskin seemed to take comfort in his son's hand on his shoulder. He was really quite handsome, she thought. There was a smear of baby drool across his otherwise immaculate shirt. He still cradled her hands, and she found she didn't want to let go.

"Belle," Baelfire said, looking at her solemnly. "If you want to go back, we can get you there. We have a way now.”

Belle frowned. Did she want to go back? Finally she said, "All I have, in that other land, are a few unmarked graves."

Baelfire released his father and sat back. "What happened, if you don't mind me asking?”

"Ogres," she said simply, with a small shrug. To anyone from their land, the single word carried the weight of a thousand stories, most of which ended in tragedy. The wound was fresh and raw.

"I'm sorry," Baelfire said. He let it be.

Morraine stirred then, excusing herself. She stepped out the door onto a wide porch, a small black box at her ear.

"Wendy?" Belle heard her say, before the rush of rain drowned her out and the door closed behind her.

Rumplestiltskin raised her hands, brushed her fingers lightly with his lips. "Do try Morrie's tea," he said, making his way back to his chair. "It's really quite good."

Baelfire grinned, sliding her dishes down to her. "Wendy is a dear friend. She'll be dying to meet you. There's so very few people we can speak of other lands with, without them thinking us mad."

The tea _was_ quite good, as were the pastries.

"Her father was one of the first people we met, when we arrived in this land," Rumplestiltskin said. "He was a great help in learning what we needed to survive here."

The door opened and Morraine entered. "Wendy wouldn't wait for the rain to slow. She'll be here soon with a change of clothes so we can go out. She's closer to your size, Belle."

"You're going shopping?" her husband asked.

"Got to," Morraine answered cheerfully. “Shops will be closed tomorrow.”

"I don't have any money here," Belle protested.

Baelfire brushed her objection aside. "You're family," he said firmly.

"Very distant family--"

"Belle," Baelfire cut off her argument, leaning forward. "Will you allow us to care for you, until you feel more confident here?"

"There is so much to learn," Morraine said. She practically bounced on her toes with excitement.

Belle smiled, despite herself. "All right," she agreed.

"Plumbing!" Morraine announced with a grin.

"I'm sorry?" Belle asked, and Baelfire laughed.

"You're going to love this," Morraine promised. She towed Belle by the hand to a door off the main room. “Hot water for bathing, as much as you want."

~

'Wendy' turned out to be a narrow blonde with tumbling curls, nearly of a height with Belle and closer in age--apparent age, that was, for she'd been in Neverland as long as Morraine and Baelfire.

She'd brought a coat for Belle, a blouse, a pair of thick blue trousers like the ones Morraine wore, and a pair of boots she called 'Wellies.'

The rain had indeed lightened up, as the three women made a dash for Wendy's 'car,' a blue carriage of metal and glass that rode on wheels and moved without horses.

"Are you sure there's no magic here?" Belle asked, grabbing for the door when the conveyance lurched around a corner.

Her cheeks were still burning. Rumplestiltskin had taken his own scarf from the mantle and wrapped it for her, his hands gentle under her chin. It was still warm from the fire, and she fancied she could smell him on it. She liked it.

"Quite sure," Wendy replied, jiggling a stick to her right as the car picked up speed.

Morraine made a small noise of disagreement, and the two exchanged glances in a mirror perched high on the front window. "Yes and no," she said. "Pan's shadow stole us from Wendy's home in London; the mermaids helped us escape from Neverland and crossed the realms to bring us here. Rum hasn't aged a day since he took on his curse, and neither has his appearance changed. What else could there be?"

Wendy hummed in thought, moving the stick again as they approached a more populated area. "Rum certainly looked for a way to Neverland, while we were gone. I think John and Michael were the only things keeping him sane. Didn't you come here because you thought there was no magic, though?"

"So the fairy said."

There was silence, then, "My father-in-law seems rather taken with you, Belle," Morraine teased.

"It _wasn't_ my imagination!" Wendy cheered.

Belle's cheeks flamed again. "His son is older than I am."

"We're all older than you, Belle," Wendy pointed out. "We'll always be older than anyone."

~

It was a laughing group that returned to the cabin that evening, the smell of roasting meat greeting them before they'd even got in the door. It was decided that Belle would share Wendy's flat until she had her own place, but Rumplestiltskin was expecting them, and so to the cabin they returned, pink-cheeked and merry.

Morraine and Wendy were ardent matchmakers. Instead of whisking Belle off to Wendy's after supper, they insisted on breaking out a game for the five of them, and playing before the fire long into the night. Belle picked it up rather quickly, trouncing all but Rumplestiltskin in short order, even though Baelfire and Morraine teamed up against them, until--

"Qi? What on earth is qi?" Belle demanded.

Wendy snickered.

Rumplestiltskin waved a dictionary under Belle's nose. "We can always look it up," he offered, "but if you're wrong, you lose a turn."

"Papa, you're such a child." Baelfire attempted to swipe the book.

Rumplestiltskin drew himself up in mock affront. "Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Give me that!" Belle plucked the dictionary from Rumplestiltskin's hand and stuffed it under a cushion. "Now no one can have it," she announced sternly, before dissolving into giggles.

~

"What will you do, Belle?" Wendy asked some time later, after Morraine had put Evan down for the night and retired.

"I don't know," she said. "I was raised to run an estate. My father had ships and caravans carrying goods in all the realms. Bookkeeping, I suppose. Any land would need that, wouldn't it?"

"You don't have to do anything, if you don't want," Rumplestiltskin said, looking up from his tiles. "You're family."

"Thank you," Belle said sincerely, "but I need to do something."

A small smile quirked the corner of his mouth and he nodded in understanding.

"Papa has a shop," Baelfire said.

"What sort of shop?" Belle asked curiously.

"Old furniture, trinkets, jewellry, books..." Rumplestiltskin added a few tiles, straightening them as he went. "It was a cover for the gems we brought over. Fifty-two points."

“I do love books.” There were so many in this room alone, and he’d promised she could read any she liked. She could touch them.

"They’re old ones, collectors' items, mostly," he said with a speculative tilt of his head. "Not really the type you'd read."

Belle chewed her lip. "Thirty-one."

Baelfire grumbled and noted down the score.

"We have a library in town, if you're interested," Rumplestiltskin said, "but it's only open a few days a week."

Much intrigued, Belle asked, "Can anyone go there?"

Wendy nodded. "Public libraries are common here. Books are much less expensive than they used to be. The building in this town doubles as a sort of community center for all sorts of events. Twenty-two."

"You're gonna get lost in there, aren't you?" Baelfire said, reaching over to place his tiles.

His father slanted a glance at her. "A great tragedy that would be."

Blushing, Belle tried to smirk--and found herself giggling. "Qi and islander… eleven, double letter, ten, triple word, all my tiles… ninety-four."

“I give up,” Baelfire announced.

Wendy sorted through her tiles, rearranging them, then added them to the board.

“‘It,’” Baelfire said, placing a single piece and standing. “I’ll be right back.”

“It’s good for Rum to have some competition,” Wendy said, not seeming to care a whit for Rumplestiltskin’s concentration. He ducked his head, and she narrowed her eyes at him in mock-disgust. “He’s been wiping the floor with the rest of us for years.”

“You’re letting me get lazy,” he complained, setting his tiles and reaching for Baelfire’s pencil. He noted down the score.

“No, we just can’t keep up with you.”

Baelfire returned, sprawling in his chair like a teenager. “Who’s taking Jamie to that kids’ dance lesson at the library tomorrow night?” he asked.

“I’m nae dancer,” Rumplestiltskin objected.

“It’s got to be you or me, unless I should ask John or Michael, but I think Jaime really wants you to take her, Papa.”

Wendy shook her head, blonde curls bouncing. “John and Michael are still out of town.”

“If tha lady wants me to escort her, I suppose I should. I do hope she is na disappointed.”

“You’ll be fine,” Wendy consoled him. “She’s nine years old. All she wants is to dress up, beg her mama to let her wear her kitten heels--”

“Who bought her kitten heels?” Baelfire demanded.

“If she wants to risk spraining an ankle, she shall, whether we’re around or not, brother-mine. Wouldn’t you rather she try it with us there?”

“I won’t let her fall,” Rumplestiltskin assured his son. “I can manage that much.”

“Hmph.”

“Does Ian want to go?” Wendy asked.

Baelfire played with a tile, flipping it around his fingers like a coin. "A few weeks ago, I would have said no, but his kindergarten class has been practising some kind of routine, and….”

“It’s really cute,” Wendy said.

“Gawd, don’t let him hear that, he’ll never forgive you.”

“He’ll need a dance partner, won’t he?” Rumplestiltskin asked.

“Don’t look at me,” Wendy said. “Nor Morrie.” Slyly she added, “His kindergarten teacher might come. She’s got her own little ones.”

Rumplestiltskin's horror was a thing to behold. All at once, three pairs of eyes turned to Belle, his pleading.

She swallowed. “Me?”

Wendy tilted her head, her lips quirking with mischief. “That were a real purdy dress you picked out today,” she drawled, imitating the clothing shop’s proprietor.

“What did you find?” her ‘brother’ teased.

“Stop.” Belle’s neck was burning. She laid her pieces on the board, regretting the low quality of the play. Her concentration was gone for good now.

Baelfire passed the paper and pencil to Wendy. “You do it,” he said. “I can’t take this. A man’s pride can only bear so much.”

“Buck up,” Wendy said, taking it from him and noting down her own score. “And quit cluttering the board with two-letter words.”

“I’m making it too difficult for you, am I?” He laid down another tile, then when she glared at him, one more.

“Fine.” She scribbled the numbers, adding them up in quick succession.

~

It seemed like both a moment and an eternity before Rumplestiltskin was due to pick her up at Wendy’s flat the next day. She wore the blue dress Wendy insisted on, and light stockings.

“Not too warm,” Wendy cautioned her, making her blush for the fifth time. Her telephone buzzed, and the screen lit up. 

“That was Morrie,” she said, putting the little device away. “Rum just left. It takes about fifteen minutes to drive here. Are you ready?’

“No. Wendy!”

“Relax, it’s just a kids’ lesson. It’ll be fun.” She fussed with Belle’s hair.

“Just a kids’ lesson… with partners.”

“Uh-huh.” Wendy grinned wickedly. “And you look stunning.”

“It’s not too much?”

“You changed your shoes, didn’t you? Here--” Wendy added a light woven shawl from her closet, wrapping it around Belle’s bare shoulders. “If it makes you feel better.”

~

Wendy shooed Belle out the door as they heard Rumplestiltskin’s car pull up to the curb. The apartment building wasn’t a large one, but they were on the second floor, and neither woman wanted him to have to climb the stairs.

She met them at the bottom, trying to look as though she hadn’t rushed. She could hear Ian talking non-stop even before they came into view. Wendy peered over the upper landing.

“Belle?” Rumplestiltskin asked.

“Hello,” she said softly, as though they’d just met.

He let go of his grandson's hand to take hers, bowing over it as if she were a great lady. His lips brushed her knuckles, and she felt something within her stutter.

She curtsied, the skirts deep and full, a style similar to some she’d worn in the other land, comforting in its familiarity. The hem was shorter than she was used to, ending just below the knee. It would have been outrageously scandalous back home.

Not here.

Jaime watched them curiously. Her hair was artfully styled, braids forming loops and coils that gave her a grown-up appearance. It was something that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Belle’s father’s court. She wore the kitten heels, a finger’s width of extra height.

Ian wore a lurid green bow-tie, and grinned up at her. He was missing a tooth, and wiggled another with his tongue, which was stained a bright blue. Rumplestiltskin gave him a look, touched his cheek to make him stop.

“Shall we?” he asked, offering his arm.

They walked to the library, only a few blocks away, Ian and Jaime ahead of them.

The library was a mixture of wood and rounded stone, the lights in most of the building dimmed but for a room off to the side, illuminated and festive.

Belle would have loved to explore, but Rumplestiltskin guided her toward it, his fingers light on the small of her back. “Later,” he murmured. “They’re na open today.”

They were greeted by a tall, smiling woman in her fifties, whose short, spiky hair stuck out in all directions. Coats were piled on a table in a corner, and they added theirs to the lot.

Ian waved cheerfully to another woman who Rumplestiltskin introduced as Ian’s kindergarten teacher.

One little girl, who Ian said was ‘Jazzie,’ wore a green dress with a brightly-colored picture of a mermaid across the bodice. ‘The Little Mermaid,’ it was captioned in a narrow serif font.

She glanced from the girl to Rumplestiltskin. “Didn’t Morraine say….”

He nodded. “It’s strange how stories travel.”

The steps turned out to be remarkably similar to those Belle had known in the other land. Jaime clung to her grandfather’s hand, unsure in this brightly-lit room. Ian claimed Belle for his partner early on in the lesson, side-eyeing any of the little girls who so much as glanced his way.

“They don’t bite, you know,” Belle told him.

Ian shrugged sheepishly, and didn’t let her go.

Soon it was almost time to leave, and Rumplestiltskin approached them, Jaime on his arm. The little girl was smiling as he handed her off to her brother, who scowled and began to wiggle his tooth again.

“Might I?” he asked, holding out his hand to Belle.

She heard Jaime giggle.

He was a much better dancer than he’d led her to believe, despite the cane. “Did the lad step on your toes?” he asked her, once they were away.

The corners of Belle’s mouth turned up. “Not once.”

He laughed. It was a warm, rich sound. “Thank you,” he said, “for rescuing me. I didn’t want to be the only unattached grown man in the room. The prospect was terrifying.”

“Anytime,” she said, earning a startled look from him.

He tilted his head inquisitively, his hair brushing her hand. She shivered. “Truly?” he asked.

Just then, Ian’s tooth fell out.

“Ewww!” Jaime squealed.

And that was the end of that. For the night.

~


	4. Chapter 4

To Belle's great delight, Wendy's flat turned out to be walking distance from Rumplestiltskin's shop as well as the library. Unfortunately, the library was only open Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.

It was just as well, for her love of books warred with her curiosity about Rumplestiltskin, and so Monday morning found her exploring the shop at his invitation, and tentatively poking her head into the back room.

He looked up with a welcoming smile, pausing in polishing a bit of silver. His waistcoat was reddish-brown, his sleeves creamy flecked cotton.

She itched to touch the fabrics, to know if they were as soft as they appeared.

A holster the color of burnt sugar outlined his shoulders, holding a weapon whose function she could not guess. That it was a weapon, she was certain. His shop sold many beautiful things, and she’d seen no guards of any sort about.

Metals were valuable here. How strange.

"Did you find anything interesting?"

"I did," she replied, snagging a battered stool by his workbench. "Fascinating, actually."

His eyes widened just the tiniest bit, and he shot her another of those sideways glances. "Dare I ask?"

'Do the brave thing...' her mother used to say.

Belle placed a hand over his work, and he ceased pretending to be absorbed in it, giving her his full attention. Somehow, she thought she'd had it all along. "You're welcome to ask," she said with just a hint of impishness.

Gods above and below, his eyes were beautiful. He stuttered. "Have you... had a chance to explore the town, yet?"

"Not half as much as I'd like," she replied, hoping.

She'd thought his eyes beautiful; he was more so when he smiled. She could love this man, she thought suddenly.

The thought floored her. She would have been content with security.

He removed the rag and silver from between their hands, setting it aside on the bench. "If I might escort you, I would be honoured to be your guide."

She could love this man for a long, long time.

Was it possible? Improbable, certainly. 

Rumplestiltskin shut off the lights and closed up, seemingly without a care for the business his shop would lose in the duration.

~

“Isn’t it a bit early for pie, Mr. Gold?” the young woman minding the bakery counter teased.

“It’s never too early for your ma’s pie, Jane,” Rumplestiltskin said, sliding into a booth across from Belle.

Relatively early in the morning or not, their order was brought out in no time, warm and fragrant, a scoop of something white and cold melting alongside.

“It’s ice cream,” Rumplestiltskin murmured in response to Belle’s questioning look, once Jane was out of earshot. “Try it.”

His expression was pure anticipation, and really, watching him could only make--

“Oh wow,” she said.

He grinned.

~

They wandered down to the waterfront after that. In truth, Belle wasn’t paying much attention to her surroundings, but to her companion.

Rumplestiltskin really was fascinating. He moved in matched rhythm with her steps, his cane tap-tapping on the ground opposite. His softened consonants fell easily on her ears, a rolling burr becoming more distinct the longer they spoke.

A flock of geese jostled at the water’s edge, eagerly chasing bits of food an elderly woman threw in light handfuls across the water.

The birds scattered as the two approached, flapping noisily in alarm.

“Rum Gold!” the woman exclaimed. “Where’s li’tle Ian? And who’s this lovely yun’ thing?”

That smile again. He seemed to be holding back laughter. “Good morning, Madam Kirk.” 

The geese crowded back to her as though nothing had happened.

“Don’ you ‘madam’ me,” she scolded. “I’m not in my dotage yet.”

“Of course not. Ian is in school this morning. I’ll be sure to tell him you asked after him.”

She nodded, mollified. “Bes’ bring him by soon. Geese are moving south.”

They sat beside her on her bench and chatted for a time. Rumplestiltskin told her of his family and Ian’s latest escapades, earning a chuckle from the old woman. He introduced Belle, who learned that Mrs. Kirk ran the library with the help of a small number of volunteers.

Mrs. Kirk asked after Jaime. “Too old to feed the geese, is she?” She clucked her tongue.

The wind blowing off the water was none too warm, so before long they retraced their steps. Winter was coming on here, and with it plummeting temperatures.

~

“What’s that?” Belle asked, pointing. Her other hand was securely tucked into Rumplestiltskin's arm, a spot of warmth against the chill. 

The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Snowmobile. Often when the snows fall, our cars can’t get through. It’s a sled with a motor, and can be a lot of fun.”

“Motor-ised, like the cars?” she asked, trying out the new words. The contraption, large as a mule, looked like no sled she’d ever seen. A sign nearby claimed, “You _can_ get there from here!”

There was something almost… proud in the way Rumplestiltskin looked at her. Pride--in her? she thought. It was a nice feeling.

Something caught his eye, and he turned their steps toward a squat grey building where a man worked over another of the horseless carriages. A metal cover was raised over the front like the jaws of some great beast, and she could see its organs, black with something like soot, as they approached.

“Mr. Gold!” the man greeted him warmly. “Good mornin’. Who’s yuh lady friend?”

To her surprise, Rumplestiltskin appeared to be blushing. “Belle March,” he said, using the name they’d decided on, “I’d like ye tae meet Harry Ford. He and Bae went to school together.”

“Pleasuh,” the other man said with a genuine smile. “I’d shake, but….” He waved a bright silver-coloured tool, showing off his greasy hands.

_Don’t curtsey,_ Belle reminded herself. “It’s nice to meet you,” she responded, her tongue tripping over the unfamiliar phrasing.

“Harry’s family has been running this garage for generations.”

“Wasn’ knee-high to a grashoppah when I met yuh,” Harry said easily. “What can I do for yah, Mr. Gold?”

“Belle’s never seen the inside of a shop like this,” Rumplestiltskin said. “I was hoping to arrange a tour, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble. We can come back at a later time--”

“No trouble at all,” the younger man assured him. “I was just about tuh take a bake. Don’ touch anythin’,” he cautioned Belle. “The geese--” he waggled his stained fingers “--will nevah come out of your clothes.”

~

Rumplestiltskin put his telephone away as Belle and Harry emerged from the narrow confines of the garage. He and Belle thanked Harry, who waved them off. “No p’oblem,” he assured them.

“Ian’s class lets out soon,” Rumplestiltskin told her. “I asked Morrie if we could pick him up and take him to lunch. Is... Is that all right?”

“I’d love that,” Belle said, linking her arm with his. 

The school wasn’t far; everything seemed to be clustered together in this little town, shops and businesses lining Main Street in loose order, a few abandoned buildings making up the rest.

One such advertised ‘Antiques’ in faded letters. She asked Rumplestiltskin about it.

“There’s a thousand shops just like mine up and down the coast, maybe one in every town in this land,” he said. “They’re always popping up and going out of business. For some, it’s just a way to collect beautiful objects. You’ll see merchandise tagged at ridiculous prices. Those are the things we’d like to keep, or only let go to someone who might treasure them.”

“We?”

“I may be guilty of that as well.”

~

They arrived early and found a spot outside the school within view of the doors.

“Mrs. Kirk seems to do a lot,” Belle commented.

Rumplestiltskin hesitated. Belle studied him. “What?” she asked.

“She smells ill,” he said apologetically. “Not--unsanitary,” he hastened to add, “but it’s rather distinct, when some organs fail.”

“Oh.”

His smile was sad. “You learn these things, after some time.”

“I’m sorry,” Belle said.

“You liked her.”

She nodded glumly.

He shook his head and reached for her hand. “Treasure it. She may not be with us long.”

“Is it wrong to be afraid to get to know someone who might leave us before long?”

“Everyone does, eventually.”

She wouldn’t cry, not here. She heard the school bell ring and bit her lip, hard.

A wrinkle formed between his eyebrows. “Ach, no,” he said. He pulled her into a gentle hug, his arms closing around her. “They always come back to us.”

She rested her head under his chin, his scarf soft against her cheek. Excited children’s voices began to fill the air, louder as the doors opened.

“Grandpa!” Ian shouted. The little boy careened in their direction, then noticed Belle and stopped short. “Hi, Miss Belle,” he said.

She swallowed and straightened, mustering a smile. “Hey Ian. Are you hungry?”

He grinned. “I’m starving!” he announced. “I could eat a whole bear.”

Rumplestiltskin laughed. He squeezed her hand. “A whole bear?”

“Jacob said he could eat a whole horse, so I said--” he trotted after them as they turned on to Main Street “--that I could eat a grizzly bear. But Jazzie said that we don’t have any grizzlies here, or brown bears, or pandas, or polar bears, or koalas, or--”

“What do we have, then?” Rumplestiltskin asked.

“Black bears! Miss Filbert said that black bears always have their babies in January. Why is that, Grandpa?”

Ian was a sweet kid, energetic as any five-year-old. He clearly adored his grandfather, and Rumplestiltskin….

Belle hadn’t thought she could find him any more attractive. She was wrong.

~

The next morning found Belle waiting outside the library doors.

“Belle!” Mrs. Kirk greeted her. “How lovely. I was jus’ thinking about you.”

She unlocked the library with an aged, arthritic hand. “Do you know we have a whole bunch of maps on display? Right over there, if you’re interested--” she pointed, ushering Belle inside and flipping on the lights.

The south wall near the entrance was covered with maps, more finely detailed than Belle had ever seen. “These are amazing,” she said.

“My son put this togethuh for me,” Mrs. Kirk said proudly. “Now here’s us.” She indicated a spot on one map. “This is the town, so you can see eve’ything, and here…” she led Belle down the wall to another frame, “the state, with satellite imagery. We didn’t have this when I was a gel. Look at all that green. Be jus’ a moment.”

She moved away to set down her purse and keys. She shrugged out of her heavy winter coat and hung it on another wall further inside. “They’s pegs over hea’ if you want.”

She reached under the desk, and something hummed to life--a computer--Rumplestiltskin had called it. She went around waking up more of the machines and turning on lights. A light over a glass box of water flickered, then illuminated a dozen brightly-colored fish.

Belle tore herself away from the maps to remove her coat; she was getting far too warm. “Oh my,” she breathed, at last getting a good look at the shelves she’d only glimpsed the night before. “There’s so many books!”

Mrs. Kirk’s smile was a trifle bemused. “It’s not much,” she said, “but it’s ours, and we’ve quite a few volunteahs that keep things running. My doctuh said I had to cut back last year, and my son… bah! Bunch of wippuh-snappahs.”

“Where are you from?” she asked Belle, removing a ball of yarn skewered by a pair of oversized knitting needles from her purse, and setting them upon the counter.

“Ah--” Belle hadn’t planned an answer to that. Rumplestiltskin said he was getting her ‘identity papers,’ something about ‘Australia.’ She sounded like she was from there? Only he’d used the word ‘fey’ instead of ‘from’ and….

“That’s pretty,” Belle said, changing the subject and admiring the half-finished scarf.

“Your Rum made this yarn,” Mrs. Kirk said. “Best in the state. Anyone’s work would look nice with this to play with.”

There had been a spinning wheel in the family area of Rumplestiltskin’s home, and another in the back room of his shop. She remembered now, although she’d been distracted by the man himself at the time. A large weaving loom had dominated a corner of the living space, massive and finely crafted, like everything he owned.

“He’s a good man, your Rum,” Mrs. Kirk said quietly, sorting out a trailing strand with some difficulty. “You take good care of him now, you hear?”

Belle swallowed. “Yes, Mrs. Kirk.”

She smiled, her face wreathed in wrinkles. “Now shoo.”

~

Rumplestiltskin found her immersed in the stacks around three.

“Has it been that long?” she asked, when the soft tapping of his cane jolted her from her thoughts.

She was seated at a table, piles of books scattered around her in heaps.

“Were you going to stop to eat?” he asked her.

Mrs. Kirk peered around the shelves. “Don’t worry about the books, dear. I can put them away.”

“Oh no!” Belle objected. “Thank you, but I made the mess; I’ll fix it.”

Mrs. Kirk nodded reluctantly. “If there’s any you don’t know where they go, just leave them on the desk,” she said, though Belle had the distinct sense that she’d taken note of the titles.

Rumplestiltskin turned a stack of books on its side, sorting them according to some mysterious system Belle didn’t understand.

“Six twenty-one goes up there,” he said, pointing. “Do you have any of the six twenties?”

Puzzled, Belle glanced at the spines of the books he held, to find him discreetly indicating the cryptic white labels at the bottoms, which were neatly lined up and ordered by number.

“Oh, how clever!”

They finished shelving the books in no time. “Can I bring you anything, Mrs. Kirk?” Rumplestiltskin asked as they donned their wraps. It was getting colder each day Belle was here in this land.

“That’s sweet of you, dear, but no thank you. You two have a good time.”

~

They picked up Jaime today, and did a late lunch, even though Jaime wasn’t so hungry yet. It was just an excuse.

Belle didn’t recognize the names of half the items on the menu.

Rumplestiltskin grinned. “Have you ever had a hamburger?”

He knew full well she had not.

It was really good. She said so.

Jaime giggled. “It’s just a burger, miss Belle.” She had her grandfather’s eyes.

“It’s all the salt they put into it,” Rumplestiltskin said.

Belle shook her french fry at him. “Don’t spoil my fun.”

They stayed out so late that the library was closed by the time Belle thought to check.

~


	5. Chapter 5

The new flyer purred contentedly on its antique axis, and Rumplestiltskin smiled in satisfied pleasure. The fresh part fit well with the rest of the wheel; he flexed his cramped fingers, glad to be done with its creation. The old piece had started splintering some time ago, and he’d honestly dreaded the chore of making a replacement. Certainly there were any number of alternatives available here, but… it was his and he had the luxury of time in this land. Perhaps it was a matter of pride.

“It works, huh?” Baelfire dragged up a low stool next to him.

“Well enough,” Rumplestiltskin said. He leaned over to gather roving from his basket. It had lain abandoned for too long. There was a batch of blue dyed fleece in storage downstairs.

“Did you see the inlaid wheels at the festival this year?” his son teased. “Abalone, cherry… even shades of green.”

Rumplestiltskin shook his head, laughing at his son. “Aye, they’re verra pretty,” he said. The single-treadle machine picked up speed, its _whisp-whisp_ sound comforting in the large open space of their home.

It was a night for relaxation. Jaime and Ian played a game before the fire, while Morraine fed Evan nearby. Wendy had dragged Belle over from their flat, and tapped a pencil on the edge of a large book set out in front of her. One of her textbooks, probably, as the font appeared excruciatingly small, when he’d happened to glance over her shoulder.

Belle curled up in his wingback chair, absorbed in one of Jaime’s Chincoteague novels. Not the chair placed across from it; she’d chosen _his_.

Or not quite absorbed. She looked up every now and then. Once or twice he caught her gaze across the room, bright blue reflecting the lamplight before one or the other looked away. He felt like a boy with his first crush, and wondered how he could fall for someone as fast as he had for her.

Baelfire noted the latest of these exchanges and grinned, undeterred by his father’s warning look or Belle’s fierce blush. “So how was it?” he pried. 

“How was wot?”

“Marta said you’d been in with Belle yesterday. Word gets around, you know.”

Rumplestiltskin flushed, his hands stilling on the fibres. The wheel kept spinning; he had to backtrack to untangle them. “Awa’ an bile yer heid,” he muttered.

Baelfire snorted. He picked up a trio of spools and began to feed them into a lazy kate. Rumplestiltskin’s yarn fetched some of the highest prices at their annual local festival. They didn’t need the money, but it was nice to feel appreciated for his skill.

There was a knock at the door, and Ian jumped up to answer it. “Uncle John! Uncle Michael!” he cried, flinging it open. They knocked; they always knocked.

“Hey sprite,” the taller of the two greeted him. John was slight of frame and appeared to be in his early thirties. He ruffled Ian’s hair as he entered, followed by his brother.

“You know better than to knock,” Rumplestiltskin reprimanded them, standing with his cane and Baelfire’s assistance. The modern orthotic shoes he wore these days helped balance his awkward gait as he made his way across the room.

Michael, the younger of the two, ducked his head as he closed the heavy door. “Of course we do, Grandpa.”

Rumplestiltskin shook his head, grasped John’s extended hand and pulled him into a hug. “Hullo to you too, eejit,” he grumbled.

John sighed, returning the embrace. There’d always been an element of guilt in their interactions, even years after Neverland.

“I hear we’ve got a new addition,” Michael said. He claimed his own hug with less trepidation.

Belle waved from Rumplestiltskin’s chair by the fire, setting her book aside and getting to her feet.

“Hey sis,” John greeted Wendy. He wrapped her into a hug, his larger frame dwarfing hers.

“What’s the occasion?” she asked, muffled by his scarf.

“Been too long,” Michael said cheerfully.

“Gossip,” John said, letting her go. “We’re not scheduled for the next conference until after Halloween.”

“Is this her?” Michael asked.

Rumplestiltskin scowled at them both. “John, Michael, I’d like you to meet Belle.”

Unfazed, the two returned her curtsey with polite bows, the very picture of gentlemen. Belle still displayed a preference for skirts, even though Rumplestiltskin knew she had at least one pair of the blue jeans favoured by local residents stashed away.

“She _is_ pretty,” Michael told Wendy mischievously. It was just low enough to keep it from Belle’s ears, but not Rumplestiltskin’s.

John lightly smacked his brother’s head, his eyes going wide behind his glasses in exasperated warning. “Did you want help with those chems?” he asked Wendy.

Ian dragged Michael off to show him a piece of artwork from school.

Nothing precious was kept on the refrigerator. Morraine said it was too easily damaged. Ian and Jaime’s work lived on the cork wall near his spinning wheel, along with a plethora of photographs.

Rumplestiltskin turned away, hoping Belle hadn’t noticed his flush. She seemed to take in everything around her without fail. It was going to get him into trouble.

He set out a few dishes on the counter and fetched some carrots from the refrigerator, peeling off the dry outer portion. He would never have done such a thing before he’d acquired his magic. The outer parts might taste a little earthy, but wasting food was a crime only the well-off committed.

The peels went into a stainless steel bucket to be carried out to the garden for composting later.

Belle joined him at the counter, peeling apples and setting them aside to be cut.

Then--“Ooch,” he hissed, setting down his knife. He stuck his finger in his mouth.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Mmm-mm,” he hummed. There was blood mixed in with the carrots on his cutting board, and he loaded them by single handfuls into the compost pail. He’d have to wash up and start over.

Belle pulled his hand from his mouth. “Let me see.”

But there was nothing there to see.

Puzzled, she looked up at him. “Where did the blood come from? Did you cut something else?”

Wordlessly, he shook his head. “It’s healed already.”

“Interesting.” She pressed his finger to her lips, then let him go.

Dazed, he watched her walk away.

“Is that more of the magic Morraine said still worked here?” she asked. She brought a few carrots from the refrigerator and placed them by the sink. “She said you hadn’t aged.” She picked up another apple, turning it over in her hands as she thought.

He gave himself a mental shake.

“What’s going through that head of yours?” he asked her. He set the cutting board aside to drip and started on the knife.

“If Baelfire, Wendy, and Morraine were in Neverland, where were John and Michael? They don’t look much older than the others.” She retrieved her knife and began to peel the apple, long, thin strips of red falling to the counter.

Rumplestiltskin rinsed the soap from his knife and set it aside. “Pan--my father--coerced them into working for him in other lands. He sent them out, and kept Wendy as a hostage all that time.”

The apple paused. “Pan is your father?”

“Was, yes.” He remembered the relief he’d felt when they told him. Pan would never take any more children from those who loved them, ever again.

Peeling carrots was easy; he could do this and talk without cutting himself. “John and Michael smuggled letters for George and I. Those days… those two were all that kept me going.”

She peeked across the kitchen area at Jonn and Wendy, their heads bent over Wendy’s textbook.

Ian had wasted no time in claiming Michael’s lap, a book of fairy tales open before them. Ian could read just fine by now, but he still liked it better if someone else read to him. He would grow out of it far too soon.

John and Michael kept a flat in town, but rarely used it. They were gone from home too much as it was.

Michael knew Rumplestiltskin could hear better than most.

“...would rather have some living thing than all the treasures of the world,” he read.

Rumplestiltskin paused. Their eyes met over Ian’s head, and Michael pressed his cheek into Ian’s hair.

That story. HIs lips twisted. The farmer’s daughter had given up her child without a second thought.

Michael grinned. Ian asked him a question.

Rumplestiltskin cut Belle’s apples without speaking, then passed them back to be cored. It wouldn’t do to allow himself to be so distracted a second time.

They fell into a comfortable partnership, as though they’d always worked so well together.

He loaded the dishes with carrots, then found another paring knife and helped her with the rest of the apples.

~

Michael was finishing the story as he and Belle joined them.

“...he stamped his right foot into the ground so deep that he sank up to his waist. Then in his rage he seized his left leg with both hands and tore himself asunder in the middle.”

Settling herself beside Rumplestiltskin, Belle turned to him.

“You what?”

He huffed. “I’m sure she would have liked that. She didn’t want anyone knowing she’d given up her child. Rather frowned upon.”

Michael smirked. He shared his handful of carrots with Ian. “Stork,” he said around the _crack_ of carrot in his mouth.

“Thank you,” Rumplestiltskin said dryly. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Ian wanted to hear the tale again, the censored version he’d heard many times already. Belle listened as Rumplestiltskin repeated it in the same formal style the Grimms had used, Jaime’s horse book forgotten.

“The blacksmith’s son had died in childbirth, and his wife would not be consoled.”

How could she? While the girl’s disregard for her child had fueled the darkness within him, this woman had left it as a field of winter brambles after a blaze. Never gone, no, the invading roots entangled throughout the cold earth.

“The smith feared he would soon lose her as well.”

There was little that afternoon of the predator he’d become. The smith’s wife had looked past his strange skin, his gold eyes, and seen only the tiny baby in his arms.

No child could replace the one she’d lost, but she’d held this one and put her to her overfull breast, and would have wept had she any tears left in her.

He had gone away without collecting what they’d promised him. 

~

Later, Belle said, “You were angry with that woman. What happened?”

Rumplestiltskin sighed. Daringly, she reached up to tuck his hair behind his ear. It made it difficult to think.

“The girl was pregnant when the farmer bragged of her supposed skill to the earl. I was known for spinning gold by then, or it wouldn’t have entered his head.”

“It wasn’t the earl’s child?”

“It was. He’d used her and rejected her. Her father wanted him to value her, so he lied to him.”

He shook his head. “The earl married her because he thought she would bring him wealth.”

“She couldn’t spin the gold he wanted. You did it.”

Rumplestiltskin grimaced. “More the fool, he.”

“Why didn’t she want the baby?”

He’d never understood that. He didn’t want to understand that. He shrugged.

She hesitated, then, “Rumple….”

His gaze, unfocused, flicked back to her face.

“What happened between you and Pan?” she asked.

That one hurt. He gathered her hand in his, kissed her fingers, and hoped she wouldn’t pursue the matter.

She studied him, held his hand in hers. She didn’t press him, but wound her fingers with his, then moved her investigation to the shape of his knuckles.

He watched her, aware that she was becoming important to him faster than he would have believed possible. He’d like to answer her question, if only to determine if it was safe to entrust her with his darker secrets.

This was the least of them, but perhaps the most painful.

Belle wanted to know everything about whatever she encountered, and his hand seemed as good a course as any. He’d given it over to her, after all.

He was struck by a sudden, blunt surge of want.

He had to find a way to quell it, quickly. He told her, in slow, halting sentences, “His name was Malcolm, and he was known as a crook, wherever we went.”

~

“You never got away from your father’s reputation, did you?” Belle asked. Her hand was still twined with his, warm in the safety of his home.

She knew another part of his past now, and yet she did not hold it against him.

He shook his head, held on to her, his hold loose. As long as she allowed him, he could believe she accepted his company, and maybe him. If he did not cling too tightly, perhaps she would not object.

“The land you and I came from is small,” he said. “There, a single kingdom might span only a few miles.”

Not nearly far enough to escape the stains.

“The world is much bigger here, isn’t it?”

Perhaps she understood him. Perhaps she could.

“Big enough to lose oneself, to travel and never see the same faces ever again.”

“Unless you wanted to.”

There had been a few, over the years. Good friends, people he would have liked to grow old with, but--

“I couldn’t,” he said.

“Because you don’t age?”

He nodded. “It’s dangerous to be different in any land.”

“I wanted to travel, once,” Belle said thoughtfully. “Now I am as far from home as I can be, and I think I’m in over my head. I’m different here.”

“Are you worried?” he asked.

She looked away, as though her uncertainty were something to be ashamed of.

“Yes,” she admitted.

“You are family, Belle.” He hesitated. “But… more than that, I _want_ you to be family.”

Her mouth opened, closed. She looked down at their joined hands, and for a moment he thought she would pull away. He would let her go, if she wished.

She would take his heart with her.

Then--

“What does family mean to you?” she asked.

Everything.

That wasn’t what she meant by her question; she wanted to know what he was offering her. It took him a moment to reply.

“It means you are safe with us... and that you can be yourself.”

It meant much more than that.

Love came later. Love could not be rushed. Love spurned both decision and caution and chose its own course.

He was half in love with her already.

“I’d like that,” she said softly.

“Then you shall have it.”

~


	6. Chapter 6

It was late before Belle and Wendy left that night.

“There’s bunks upstairs,” Wendy told her, driving back to town. “When John, Michael, and I found our own flats, Grandpa wanted us to know that we always had a home there.”

She slanted a smile across at Belle. “There’s an extra, too.”

Belle processed that.

“Why do you call him ‘grandpa?’” she asked.

This late, the windows in the town were dark. Wendy glanced at her, the streetlamps casting strange patterns over the two of them.

“We corresponded with Father for fifty years before he passed, a hundred on our end. He wasn’t gone. We just--” her hands fluttered over the wheel, thumped back into place, “--never heard from him again.”

“Time stands still in Neverland, and we didn’t grow up. Grandpa--” she slowed to a stop at the town’s only traffic light, “--he made sure we were never orphans.”

She didn’t notice the light change from red to green.

“He took us back to London, shortly after we killed Pan.

“Do you know what it’s like to see a grave that’s fifty years old, another a hundred, know it was someone you knew, and then look at yourself in the mirror, and….”

“It doesn’t match, does it?”

~

The library wasn’t open the next day. Determined to make herself useful while she learned her way around this new land, Belle spent the morning adding up columns of numbers written in Rumplestiltskin’s neat hand.

Here and there, Wendy's precise script marked earlier pages. Numbers hadn’t changed from Belle's old land to the new; the consistency was comforting. Inundated by machinery that beeped and hummed, two and two still equalled four, wherever she happened to be.

Clocks were a known quantity to her, but the new devices here... and electricity! How fun.

“We didn’t have tools like this, in the other land,” Rumplestiltskin said, clicking off a small handheld torch. Its pale blue flame extinguished, he looked up, removing a pair of tinted goggles. His hair was tied back in a neat tail, his ears bared. Belle wanted to touch them. She played with her pen instead.

He dressed more formally when in the shop, she’d discovered. His shirt today was a deep green, verdant as holly.

Colour was wealth, where she’d come from, but dyes were common here, every shade imaginable rendered in textile and paint.

He showed her the ring he’d been working on. There was a faint line in the metal where his torch had been a minute ago.

“This was brought in for resizing. The owner’s finger had got smaller. She said it ‘rolled around like a horseshoe on a peg.’ She’d nearly dropped it doon the sink the other dae.

“You cut it open, here--” he pointed to the faint line with a pair of tweezers “--and remove a wee bit.” He picked up a conical dowel marked with lines and numbers. “Then you bend it into its new shape, file the edges, and seal it together with a bit of solda.”

He gave her the dowel, the ring resting neatly at the number eight.

“How do you know you’ve got the right size?” Belle asked.

Rumplestiltskin reached for a series of plain rings strung on a wire circle about the size of a bracelet. They ranged from very tiny to some that would fit a troll. He sorted through them, opened the circle and laid a few out on the workbench.

“They’re numbered,” he said, holding up the middle size for her to see. She grasped his hand to peer at the tiny stamp in the metal.

He watched her with the oddest expression. “You try them on--” he paused to look to her for permission. When she opened her hand, he slipped the dull metal band onto her third finger “--and see if they fit.”

~

He’d set aside her own space on his workbench. It was covered with newsprint, nuts and bolts, and various bits of moving parts. A box of disposable nitrile gloves sat nearby.

This morning the bench was occupied by a ‘lawnmower,’ a machine used to cut grass, the vibrant green grain grown around homes and shops. Ornamental only, he told her, and never allowed to go to seed for harvest.

“This land is so strange,” she said, removing a wheel from the frame.

“Aye, that it is.” He wiped a smear of oil from her cheek, setting the silk handkerchief aside. He still used them. No one else here did. They were thought to be old-fashioned, he’d said, offering her a box of the modern replacements.

He’d just ruined that one, she thought. She chose to keep her silence.

~

At eleven-fifteen sharp, Rumplestiltskin flipped the sign to ‘closed’ and locked up. It was a short walk from there to Ian and Jaime’s school. Belle walked with him, his arm warm against her side.

Ian had tear tracks upon his face when he trudged out of the building. He offered his grandfather a small smile, then wrapped his arms around his waist without a word.

“Hey, lit’le man,” Rumplestiltskin greeted him softly. He bent down to return the hug and caress the boy’s hair. “Why th’ long face?”

“Jacob is movin’ away,” Ian said, the words muffled by Rumplestiltskin’s woollen overcoat.

“I’m sorry. Did you get to say goodbye?”

That seemed to be the crux of it, for Ian broke into fresh tears. “Unh-uh,” he said.

“Come on, then.” Rumplestiltskin steered them to an out-of-the-way corner with a bench. Ian crawled into his lap, snuggling into him.

Belle sat beside them, and Rumplestiltskin pulled her close with an arm about her shoulders. She reached for Ian’s hand and squeezed it gently. She meant to let go, but then Ian clutched at her, so she let him hold it. He played with her gloved fingers as his tears subsided.

She thought he would have fallen asleep if it wasn’t for the cold. She felt Rumplestiltskin kiss the top of her head and heard him ask, “Are you hungry?”

Ian nodded.

“No bears today?” Belle asked, getting a small shake of the head from him. She removed her gloves and pulled out a few tissues she’d pocketed from the box in the shop, using them to clean Ian’s face.

~

Ian was quiet over lunch, then, “Can I call you Grammie?” he asked.

Belle had to swallow her food very quickly. It ached all the way down, unchewed and too large for her throat. She couldn’t look at Rumplestiltskin.

“Why would you wan’ to call her that, Ian?” he asked.

“Because Dani said her grandpa married her grandmother, and she really really likes her, so she gets to call her Grammie.”

Belle dared to look at Rumplestiltskin. His face was as red as hers felt.

“ _Sorry_ ,” he mouthed from behind Ian’s head.

Belle bit her lip. “Your grandpa and I aren’t married, Ian.”

“Oh.”

It was easy to guess the train of thought running through Ian’s head. She could almost see the idea forming.

So could his grandfather.

He asked in a rush, “What did you do in school today, Ian?”

Ian shot him a suspicious glance, which looked utterly comical to Belle, given their difference in height.

But Ian chose to take the bait, and was off running with it. He chattered away at full speed. Belle peppered him with questions.

What was a train? How did one use steam to make something move? It goes _how_ fast?

Rumplestiltskin filled in the gaps where Ian was stumped. 

Then she asked, “What’s chocolate?”

That one stopped him cold. “Grandpa?”

Rumplestiltskin laughed.

~

“What are these?” Belle asked later that afternoon, indicating a display in the glass cabinet between she and Rumplestiltskin. It was one of many more questions. She decided she would have to chat with Ian every chance she got.

Rumplestiltskin seemed to enjoy her company and her questions. He possessed a keen intelligence, and a canny sense for business. “They’re weapons,” he said, opening the case from the other side. He removed a few of the items and laid them on a plush velvet pad upon the counter.

She frowned at them, tracing an engraved mother-of-pearl handle with a curious finger.

“Most aren’t made so decorative today,” he told her. “People think… that if the exterior is too lovely, it can’t do anything. This one--” he drew a utilitarian black and brown version from the holster tucked under his elbow, “--was made in Germany by Walther only fifty years ago. See? Ugly.” He shrugged and put it away.

So that’s what that was. “What do they do?”

“They shoot projectiles, a bit like a crossbow, but noisier."

She picked up the mother-of-pearl weapon. “It’s so tiny,” she said.

“Small but deadly,” he agreed.

Her mouth quirked. “Is that so?”

He flushed under her amused scrutiny. “Aye.” He swallowed, then, “The larger projectiles produce more recoil… pushback. This--” he tapped the stubby nose of the thing, “--won’t do much damage unless you are verra close, but it’s easier to use and conceal.”

She turned the weapon to peer down its nose. Across from her, she sensed him go still as the grave. She looked up at him with a puzzled frown.

He reached over and gently turned the nose away from her.

“Don’t dae that,” he pleaded. He seemed to breathe again. Had he stopped? His face was white as milk. “Here.” He took it from her and opened it with hands that shook, checking inside before offering it back to her.

She took it slowly and set it upon the counter. “I frightened you,” she said, closing her hand over his in apology.

He mustered a wan smile and turned his hand to clasp hers. “Ye can see when a crossbow is loaded, but no’ these,” he explained. “I’m nae ready to lose you just yet.”

She wove her fingers together with his. “Thank you.”

~

“So Ian likes you then,” Rumplestiltskin said, as they worked on a tray full of silver in the narrow space behind the counter.

Belle blushed. “He’s a sweet little boy.”

Rumplestiltskin smiled.

“I have a dilemma, that perhaps you can help me with,” he said, picking up another piece.

“Hmm?” Was he nervous? His speech had done that thing again, where the accent she’d grown so fond of fell away.

“It is customary, in this land, for two adults to know each other for a long time before marrying, sometimes years.”

Belle frowned. “That sounds terrible, if they really want to marry.”

He pursed his lips. She tried not to stare. She couldn’t look at this man and discuss the subject of marriage in so academic a fashion.

“It was different, where you and I are from... unless it’s changed since I left. I have no way of knowing how much time has passed in the Enchanted Forest.”

“No different,” she assured him. The ticking of the clocks seemed loud in the quiet of the shop. She would have daydreams later, where this conversation followed its potential. She couldn’t think on that now.

Her gaze slid over his shoulder; her eyes widened. He’d flipped the sign to ‘closed’ while she’d been in the back. Her eyes returned to him, and this time she did not look away.

“Maybe Ian has the right idea,” she said slowly.

He set aside the silver he held; he was really only fidgeting with it at this point. She set hers down, and he took her hand.

“You make me want to be the best version of me. I want to do right by you, Belle.”

She shook her head. “Who else would I marry?” she asked, giving him her other hand. He cradled them as though they were something precious.

“You deserve... so much better than me,” he whispered, “but I would be foolish to wait for you to understand that.”

His hands, smudged with silver tarnish, brought hers to his mouth. She was touching his lips; she wanted to explore; she _wanted_ , and she didn’t know what it meant. His lips pressed into her knuckles; she turned her hand, brushed the sensitive pad of her thumb over them.

They parted. Ever so gently, he nipped her thumb.

Something in her belly tightened. His crooked teeth scraped her, retreated.

She could love this man, someday. She wanted to love him.

“I don't… want to understand that,” she said.

Tentative hope shone from him. “Not ever?”

Long ago, her mother would read to her and Papa. Evenings spent together, warm with their books, warm with family.

 _Love layered,_  
_love in layers,_  
_love mysterious,_  
_in mystery, loved me._

 _Love--a delicate flame,_  
_once gone, gone forever._

Belle would kindle him brighter, if she could. Her palm on his cheek, her thumb stroked the corner of his eye.

“What are you asking me, Rumple?”

He swallowed. Yes, he _was_ nervous, she realized.

“Will you… marry me?”

Joy, the strength of which surprised her. She wanted; she knew she wanted him, and he was hers. Tears burnt at her eyes; his cheek curved against her hand, an anchor while the world swam. His hand over hers. Warm--his lips were warm too, gentle with affection.

The scent of him filled her senses; their breaths mingled in the quiet. Cedar and basil, oranges and cloves. Wool, ever-present, though not in evidence.

She stroked his hair. It was just as soft as she remembered, from that brief, daring touch last night.

Wonderingly, he met her nose with his, followed one of the damp trails across her cheek.

“Yes?” His tongue cleaned the salt from her.

“Yes. What took you so long?”

He huffed a laugh into her hair. His lips drifted over her temple, and once more over her hand, her third finger.

Her mother had loved opals. Her fingers closed over his, his wool-worn calluses dear to her.

It fit perfectly, as if it had been made for her.

Of course it did; he had.

She shivered and crowded in to him. He held her, secure and safe, his sharp hips fitting hers. Her breath hitched, then, a shape she’d never felt pressing in a ridge against her. Nothing thin about that.

A glance to the shop’s door, and the sight of its turned lock filled her with a sort of stable comfort. He followed her glance, his brow furrowing. She kissed him again, drew him by the hand beyond the curtain that divided the shop from the back room.

Sometimes, when the first snows fell, no one would be able to get through the icy streets. “Ground’s too soft,” they complained here. Half melted and half frozen, their vehicles would slip dangerously on the ice. Many shops kept provisions and sleeping arrangements for those nights. Some even had apartments over the premises.

Beyond the privacy of that curtain was a modest cot, covered with fine blankets of dark wool. A bed was where such things happened; any virgin knew that.

When he saw where she was leading him, Rumplestiltskin stopped, bewildered.

“Belle, we can’t...”

“Are you to be my husband or aren’t you?” she asked.

“I… I would never go back on such a thing,” he stammered.

“I know.”

She kissed him gently, her hands resting upon his shoulders. The straps of the holster were crafted in supple leather; they and the fabric underneath both hid and revealed him to her in texture and warmth. Instead of satiating her curiosity, they inflamed it. She wanted more.

He gasped into her mouth. Her arms slid to wrap around his neck, his soft hair tickling at her skin.

The bulge in his trousers was more pronounced than ever. She divested him of the holster, turned to hang it neatly over a chair.

His hands crept under her blouse, bare skin on hers and tucking under the waistband of her skirt, his hips resting against her rear. She pressed back into him and he shifted his weight, the ridge--she’d heard it called ‘cock’ by men when they thought they were alone--fitting neatly into the crevice. She wanted to see it, explore it.

A deep ache began between her legs, like something hollow and needy.

She wondered.

He breathed against her temple, his chest pressed to her shoulders. Just breathed.

“Please,” she whispered. He twitched, his fingers curling into the soft flesh of her belly.

She reached for the zipper at her side, the tiny, delicate thing hissing as it opened, her skirt falling to the floor.

He explored her with reverent hands, his lips resting in the crook of her neck, the calloused pads of his fingers following the line of her underwear--lace, Wendy had insisted--and up under her breasts, as though there were an order to things. Perhaps there was.

The elastic band of her brassiere scraped gently over her nipples, releasing her breasts into his waiting palms. She’d thought her chest a nuisance when it had first begun to grow, an unwelcome fixation for the men of the court. He held her, his thumbs smoothing over her nipples, which pebbled under his touch.

The emptiness between her legs clenched down on nothing. She moaned; she hadn’t thought she could make such a sound for anything but pain.

He pulled her blouse up over her head. The bra followed, scraping over her arms with the clasp intact.

“You’re wearing too much,” she complained.

He laughed, the motion shifting his shirt against her skin. “Help me, then,” he said.

“You’ll lose your buttons,” she warned.

He did indeed lose buttons. The clasp on his trousers might have been ruined as well, but then she had him in her hand, exploring him at last.

The sound he made when she closed her hand on him resembled her groan that had so surprised her moments ago. His head fell back; he held onto her for balance, the tendons in his neck standing out in ropes from his flesh.

Distracted from her discovery, she licked one, then bit it. He whined, his eyes going wide.

‘Sometimes pain can feel good,’ she’d read once. She’d thought it strange at the time. Was this what the book had meant?

“Belle...” Rumplestiltskin sounded close to begging. Her curiosity piqued at the sound. “You’re going to kill me. Please, Belle.”

The wretched note mesmerized her. She pulled him toward the cot, the ache between her legs becoming more urgent with every passing moment.

The underwear was in the way; she stripped it off. He pushed her onto the cot, crawling on his knees between her legs. The heat from his body warmed her; the scent of him a blanket of comfort. She thought she would recognise it fifty years from now.

She pulled his head down to kiss him; he whined into her mouth, the velvety head of his cock leaving a damp trail along her thigh.

She shivered, his hair, softer than silk, falling over his shoulders and brushing her skin. He was waiting for something, and she didn’t know how to ask. Such things were not discussed around young ladies.

“Please,” she murmured. She nipped his lower lip, and he groaned, then as if that were his cue, he nudged her legs wider and lined himself up. His cock slid partway into her, stretching her.

It was glorious. It was exactly what she’d been aching for.

It hurt.

He stilled, panted against her shoulder at her cry. Gently, though she could tell the pause cost him dearly, he rested his elbows upon the pillow, cupping the back of her skull.

“All right?” he asked, worried.

She nodded. “What was that?” she asked.

He frowned, closing his eyes as if to master his control. His voice came out in a rasp. “No one told you?”

“My old nurse… she died. I think she would have.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know how to make it not hurt.”

“It does that every time?” she asked.

His headshake was quick and definite. “No! Just the once. A little more, I think, and it will never hurt again.”

There was a caveat there; she read it in his ernest, strained, tone. _He_ would never hurt her, not through malice or negligence, but she understood that it was possible, and he didn’t want to tell her.

She buried her hands in his hair and kissed him. His mouth shook; she tasted his need, licking it from him. It was need for her; she savored it. “Do it, then,” she said. “It will be better soon, surely.”

The second thrust rocked her back, that painful part of her receding under the pleasure of fullness. She clamped herself around him, legs and secret parts, and sank her teeth into his shoulder.

Distantly, an odd texture on his back registered against her hands, but he keened with the pain, and his thrusts became sharp and forceful. He hit something deep inside her, rubbed past another, altered his angle until she gasped, arching up off of the cot in pleasure.

He shuddered and stilled, his face going slack. She stroked her thumbs over his cheeks, drinking in the way his eyelids fluttered, and his hair stuck to his skin in sweaty clumps.

Still buried deep within her, he opened his eyes and stared down at her in awe. Something still thrummed through her body, raw and aching and _wanting_.

His cock softened as he caught his breath, no longer filling her. She let her legs fall to the cot and he slipped out, kissing her gently. She would be content, she told the tension that still coiled in her belly. Maybe those old wives were right, that the marriage bed was much more enjoyable for men.

He reached down between her legs then, his fingers careful on her sensitive parts, and slid them between her folds. The tension she’d tried to quell centered around his hand, the thumb that rubbed firmly over the apex of her sex, the strong fingers that alternately crooked and thrust, drawing out her pleasure until it shook her, made her dizzy, coursed through her with the most delicious heat. He swallowed her cry with his mouth, his tongue pushing deep, tangling with hers.

Warm and languid, she watched him pull his fingers from her, smeared with a strange white substance and something that looked like blood, all mixed together. Surely something that bled that much would have hurt more than it had.

He left her then, and she heard the sound of water running. He came back with a cloth soaked in warm water, which he used to clean her between her thighs.

She murmured sleepily at his fussing, made her displeasure known when he left her for a second time.

He was back in a moment, cradling her as her skin cooled and covering them with blankets, his head behind hers on the pillow. She scooted over so he would have more room, tugging his arm when he would have given her space. She didn’t want space right now.

“How did you learn that?” she asked him.

For a moment, she thought he’d fallen asleep, then, “I had to, I suppose. I was married once before--to Bae’s mother.”

She made a questioning sound.

“I tried to make her happy, but... after I returned from the war, she was ashamed of me.”

“Why?” Belle asked. She turned to look at him in the narrow bed.

He swallowed. “I was afraid, for my unborn son, for myself… the duke threw men at the ogres like refuse. I saw them coming back from the front, and…” he trailed off, looking away.

“Is that how you hurt your foot?”

He closed his eyes. “Not on the battlefield. I did it to myself.”

She was horrified. “What?” 

He cringed from her, his arm loosening from around her waist. “That’s why Milah was ashamed of me,” he said.

Afraid, she grabbed his arm, held him to her. “Don’t leave me! Rumple--”

“Belle, I tricked you,” he said. “I’m not who you thought I was. I’m the worst kind of monster.”

“That’s not what your family says,” she argued. “That’s not what this town says.” She was _angry_. “You told me you weren't the sort to back out on me. Were you lying to me then?”

She turned over, her front pressed against his, holding him so he wouldn’t fall off the edge of the narrow cot.

“This--” she held up her hand, the opal ring glinting on her finger “--is mine… and I’m not letting it go. I will not let _you_ go. Do you understand me, Rumplestiltskin?”

He stared at her, bewildered. She had a fleeting thought that he was adorable when he did that. She couldn’t stay angry with him for long.

“Rumple?” she asked gently.

He nodded, but his shoulders remained hunched, his posture withdrawn even in the circle of her arms.

She could not trap him, despite her words. Again, the texture of his back seemed odd to her. Thin ridges like scars rippled over him.

One hand spread, slowly flattened against his spine.

He watched her miserably.

“Rumple? What is this?”

But she knew exactly what it was.

“Would you have me?” he asked. “Would you have all of me?”

Did he think she wouldn't?

“All of you,” she promised him. She kissed him, her splayed hand holding him to her, held him until the tension drained from him and he relaxed against her.

Time, and she waited for him. Some time more, and he rested in her arms.

Softly, she asked, “How far does this go?”

Brown eyes opened, examined her. A shuddering breath, and he sat up, his legs over the side of the bed. She followed, their blankets falling away.

Her stomach churned; she stifled any sound she might have made. A moment, and he turned to look at her. She'd been silent too long.

She knelt up behind him, cupped the opposite side of his jaw, and kissed the corner of his mouth.

His eyes slid shut.

“The duke?” she asked.

“Yes.”

He didn't quite flinch when she touched his shoulders--a twitch, her palms at the edges of his scars.

Time, and she felt his breathing ease.

Slowly, her bent knees on either side of his hips. Lower, his rear between her thighs. He stiffened, and she froze.

He was frowning when he twisted to see her. Solemn, she waited for him.

The frown turned to puzzlement, a deep furrow between his brows. She was struck with a sudden urge to explore that furrow with her tongue. She settled for kissing his cheek.

Puzzlement to wary bemusement. Her hand left his shoulder, followed his arm to the back of his knuckles, threaded her fingers through his.

Up. She folded his arm to his chest, turned him back, her chest to his scars.

Time, and he released a shuddering breath. His head sagged.

He knew where she was going now, and her belly pressed to his spine, her curls to the small of his back.

Her cheek to his, a hint of stubble prickling at her skin.

Softly, “One does not inspect their prospective spouse before agreeing to marry them.”

He swallowed, a small motion. “If they did, would they still agree?”

She'd known men to boast, to strut and swagger.

Words would not do, here.

Her lips to his cheek, she switched his hand to her other and reached up.

Delicately, her thumb tucked under his upper lip.

A sharp inhalation--for all her caution, she'd surprised him.

Her thumb along his molars, but no protest came. The crevices, and the hinge behind.

When at last he moved, it was to open, and gently scrape her with his teeth.

She wanted him. Still nestled in his mouth, she turned him, then drew a wet trail up his cheekbone with her thumb.

“They would agree, and lest one doubt them, they would insist on completion of that contract as soon as possible.”

~

‘Antiques and Accoutrements' remained closed for the rest of the day. A handwritten sign taped to the door turned away potential customers with a vague ‘closed until further notice.’ A cheerful addendum in Belle’s elegant script announced, ‘We’re getting married!’

Morraine, Wendy, and a very excited Jaime whisked Belle from Wendy’s flat to the town’s only formalwear shop.

~

“By tomorrow?” Liesel Laliberte shook her head. “We couldn’t possibly--”

Morraine offered her an opaque envelope with a sheepish smile. “We have an appointment with the county Justice at eleven o’clock.”

Liesel opened it. “Oh my,” she said. “Yes. Yes, I think we can do this.”

~


	7. Chapter 7

The nearest courthouse turned out to be an hour’s drive away. They set out from the cabin the very next morning in a caravan, Baelfire driving Rumplestiltskin’s Cadillac, Rumplestiltskin next to him in the passenger seat.

Baelfire refused to ride in a car with both groom and bride, claiming that this land’s tradition of separating the two was for everyone else’s sanity.

Michael drove his and John’s truck, Ian in the narrow seat between them. Michael never minded if Ian said gross things; he just laughed and responded in kind. Ian adored Michael. 

Rumplestiltskin kissed Belle, long and sweet, until his son pounded on the window of Wendy’s SUV, chivvying them along. “We’re going to be late,” Baelfire said, his nose screwing up. He then stole Rumplestiltskin’s car keys and dragged him away.

Wendy pulled out in her battered blue SUV, Jaime bouncing next to Evan’s carseat, Morraine on the other side, Belle in the front. A long, opaque garment bag was draped in the cargo area.

“Seatbelt, Papa,” Baelfire reminded him, when he’d twisted around to see the SUV disappear down the gravel driveway.

He gave his son a look, fumbling for the buckle.

Baelfire only grinned. “Not moving,” he singsonged. The buckle _click_ ed, and he turned the key.

“Why are ye driving?” Rumplestiltskin asked, as the big car rumbled onto the main highway.

Baelfire grimaced. “Do you really want to drive? I’d like to get there in one piece, thank you.”

“I’m a perfectly good driver.”

“Uh huh. Most days. Remember when Wendy broke her arm? I thought we were all going to die on the way to the ER.”

Interstate ninety-five ran up and down much of Maine’s coast. Mid-morning traffic on a weekday moved easily. His phone beeped.

_Reservations at 12?_ Morraine’s text inquired, followed by the names of a few establishments near the courthouse. He read them off to Baelfire, and keyed in a reply.

He had to type it twice, after he deleted the first one by accident.

“Nervous much?” his son asked. He glanced into the rearview and switched lanes.

_More than I’ve ever been before in my life_.

“Why would I be?”

“She’s not going to back out, Papa. Belle’s not that kind of woman.”

_Definitely not_. Aloud he said, “I’m nae worried about that.”

A few minutes later, Baelfire asked, “Why so soon?”

“I was afraid she’d pick someone else. A lass like Belle isn’t going to have any shortage of men lining up at her door.”

Baelfire nodded.

“I waited a hundred years for the right woman, Bae. Pardon me if I’m a little impatient.”

Cringing in mock horror, Baelfire laughed.

“Haud yer wesht,” Rumplestiltskin said fondly.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“And ye shant.”

“Right. I packed something for you. It’s under the seat.”

Frowning in surprise, Rumplestiltskin drew out a bulky paper bag, and opened it curiously.

A mass of black angora fiber spilled out, carded into neat lengths of roving, all wrapped around an intricately carved drop spindle to protect it from breakage.

That explained the lint roller tucked into the door.

“It was supposed to be for later,” his son explained, “but….”

“Thank you,” he whispered. It was one of the best of Baelfire’s art, exquisitely balanced, a silk leader already tied in place.

“Your fidgeting is going to drive me mad,” Baelfire complained.

He gave the tool an experimental clockwise spin. “I do not fidget.”

“You’re worse than Ian, Papa. We both know who he gets it from.”

~

“A week with no one else around,” Belle mused, as Rumplestiltskin cut the ignition in front of their home. Her delicate hand slid daringly up his thigh. “Whatever shall we--”

He didn’t let her finish, but turned to her across the wide seat, claiming her mouth. She pulled him to her, her lips eager under his. More insistent tugging, and he straddled her, his erection tenting his trousers, his ruined foot hanging over the edge.

She pushed him back to lean against the dash where she could see him, then undid his fly, exposing him to her and grasping him in her hand.

He panted at her touch, every nerve in his body alight.

“Belle!”

She shushed him, her blue eyes avid on his face, then his cock. “Show me how,” she said, wrapping his hand around hers.

He grunted, an undignified sound, and squeezed. “I’ll muss your dress.”

She grinned. “You can sully my dress any time you like, sir.”

He came like a boy, all over her, white on white. She watched him, his semen staining the pristine fabric of her gown.

“I’ve got it on you,” he said, when he could speak again.

She pursed her lovely lips, laughing at him. “You’ve got it _all_ over me.”

“No, I mean--”

His come dripped down over the line of her bodice. He bent forward to clean her skin, his tongue licking away the filth he’d left there.

She drew him up and kissed it from his mouth, greedily sucking at his lower lip.

If he hadn’t seen the blood and heard her cry the day before, felt her fear in her shiver, he might have doubted her a virgin. She learned with electric speed, soaking in everything she could.

He craved her pleasure, again and again and again. Perhaps his body would grant him peace for a time now.

Still hanging out of his trousers, he squirmed down onto the floor, his chest over her lap, and found the lever under her to give him room. The bench slid away. Belle made a startled sound, her fingers winding into his hair.

He kissed her in apology, and reached for the other lever. “The seat goes back, like this,” he said, finding it. She reclined obligingly, her hands in his hair as he gathered her skirts and lowered himself down to her.

Pale blue lace greeted him. He set his teeth into her gently, breathing her in. Her arousal filled his senses, heady with affirmation.

She was comfort to him. Satin ribbons held her underwear at the hips; they unravelled when he pulled their ends, unclothing her.

The first touch of his tongue brought a gasp from her, her fingers tightening. He looked up over her bunched skirts, her pale neck arched into the headrest, only the underside of her chin visible. One slim leg rose, searching, and he draped it over his shoulder, her calf caressing him as he explored her, shifting her curls aside for better access.

Her stiletto heel scraped the dash, hooking into the vent and pushing when he found her centre at last.

He heard something crack.

She was wet on his tongue, soft and responsive. Her hands in his hair became painful. He wanted more, delved into her with two fingers, then three, her mewls startled and wanton by turns, encouraging and delighted. Never, not even with all his magic, had he ever felt so powerful, nor so humbled.

She shuddered, spasmed around his fingers, her pelvic bone driving into his face with bruising force. He pushed back, his hand aching, and thrust into her with a vulgar squelching, until his knuckles hindered further progress.

When her grip on him relaxed, he pressed his lips into her curls, loosened strands of his hair coming away with her hands.

Appalled, she let him go, her leg falling to the floor. He chuckled, chasing her sweaty palm with his damp mouth, seeking the hollow as best he could.

“Good?” he breathed against her. She sat up and cupped his cheek, her skin cooling in the chill invading the car from outside

“How can you ask me that?”

He shrugged. “Do you want to go inside, warm up?” he teased her.

She shivered at the words spoken against her wrist. “I’m quite warm, thank you,” she said.

His leg was beginning to cramp, but there was nowhere else he’d rather be. Somehow she knew of his discomfort, for she bent down and tucked him in, fastening his trousers and opening the door.

He stopped her as she made to climb out, reaching under her skirt and drawing out the scrap of pale blue lace. Her eyes on him, he folded it neatly, then stowed it away in a pocket of his tailored suit.

Now they were ready. He met her gaze to find her staring, her pupils dilated with new arousal.

She swallowed, then swung her legs from the car, her skirts falling down over her naked front.

He passed the cane to her and climbed out. She helped him to stand, and caught him when he stumbled, his stiff limbs declining to cooperate.

She kissed him gently. “It _is_ cold,” she said.

~


	8. Chapter 8

They’d let the fire in the hearth go out the night before. Rumplestiltskin rekindled it while Belle changed out of her soiled gown and put a kettle on to boil. Soon they were ensconced on the settee, a crackling fire and cups of fragrant tea warming them.

Rumplestiltskin's cup was missing a chip from the rim. He smiled when she spotted it, his finger scraping the sharp edge. His eyes danced with mischief.

She kissed the corner of his mouth and let it be. 

“It’s strange for it to be so quiet here.”

“It hasn’t been this quiet in fourteen years, unless my lot were in school.”

“You had five teenagers in the house at one time?”

“Three.” He sobered, his thumb now fitted into that sharp edge. “My father often forced John and Michael to work for him in other lands, even as children.”

She set her tea in its saucer on the table and touched his thumb. He looked up from the chip, then sighed as she removed the cup from his hands, old anger draining out of him.

“They were in and out of Neverland so much that they were grown by the time they all escaped,” he said, his fingers weaving together with hers.

She sipped his tea and made a face. She passed it back to him; there was too much sugar in it.

He smiled, a tiny thing, and drank his oversweet tea, his eyes crinkling over the rim at her.

It tasted better from his mouth.

She held the cup steady between them, dangerously close to spilling.

When she drew back, she said, “No one was anywhere near the same age as their physical appearance, were they?”

“Never will be,” he agreed. “It was rough for a few years.”

His thumb went back to the chip.

She tilted her head. “Morraine and Wendy said time runs differently. Doesn’t that mean….”

“That they’re all older than me?” He glanced at her through his lashes. “By about fifty years. There’s no way to know for sure.”

The concept of so much time was still difficult for her to grasp. She was barely out of her teens herself.

“They’ve been through a lot,” he said quietly. 

His family had, certainly. Rumplestiltskin… she watched him. They weren’t the only ones.

She took his cup from him and placed it on the table.

His eyebrow raised in question. Someday she would get the tale from him, but for now--

“I’d like to try something,” she said. “What you did, in the car--does it work the other way?”

He swallowed. She’d been right to remove his cup from him before asking him this. She slid her hand into his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp to reassure him.

“Men and women, do they do this?” she persisted.

“Sometimes men and men,” he said.

She nodded; she’d heard of such things.

“Is it good?” she asked.

Something pained crossed his face. “Yes, but Belle--”

“Will you let me try?”

He was puzzled, now. “You want to… why?”

“Because you are my husband.” Because where she had only looked for security, she had found him instead.

He shook his head, a small motion with her fingers in his hair. His hips shifted, and she laid her other hand over him. He stilled instantly, a tinge of pink burning in his cheeks.

Was he… embarrassed? She rather thought he liked the idea, if the growing bulge she could feel were any indication. 

“Tell me?”

The tinge spread. “S’ dirty,” he mumbled, not meeting her eyes.

Oh.

Her hand tangling in his hair, she kissed him, cupped the back of his head and nipped at his lips until he surrendered to her, his mouth opening under her assault.

She squeezed him with her other hand, just to see what would happen.

His hips snapped up, and he keened into her mouth, a sound like a wounded animal.

She pushed him back and drank the sound from him.

Then she let him go, standing to her feet and walking to the door leading to their bedroom, away from the windows.

“Belle?” he sounded lost, and afraid.

She still hadn’t got used to the idea of windows so large and clear, but with no one around. Back home, a building which possessed anything so extravagant would have been surrounded by many other buildings, the infrastructure needed to support inhabitants of such wealth.

She waited until she was past the hall threshold before drawing her dress over her head. “Are those my drawers in your pocket or not, Rumple?”

~

She didn’t know what had become of his clothing. She rather suspected the pieces formed a trail from the main room into their bedroom, but the others weren’t expected home for a week.

What mattered was that he was no longer wearing them when he found her, hers long since discarded. She’d left the lights on, and it would seem that when he went bashful on her, the color travelled all the way down his front.

She took the time to admire him. In their own home, he’d left his shoes behind, but walked gingerly on his twisted foot.

His bedroom, their bedroom, his home, their home… it would need some getting used to. She liked it. She’d been by that morning to leave her few things from Wendy’s flat, and to change not so long ago, but this, being here with him--this was new.

She stopped him when he reached for the light switch by the door, catching him by the wrist. “Take away my fun, will you?” she teased gently.

He shivered in her hand.

“Rumple?”

His eyes were averted again.

She touched his chin. Brown eyes lifted to hers, uncertain. There was a hint of red in his hair, gilded in the streaks of afternoon sun through the (curtained) windows. It would be quite dim in here without the electric lamps.

“We can turn the lights out if you want.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. Thumb and forefinger of the hand she held fidgeted.

She pulled his hand to her, pressed her lips into his callused knuckles. “I was rather hoping I would get to see more of you.”

“Hoping.”

“Mmm.”

“Belle, you don’t want to see me.”

“I liked what I saw yesterday,” she argued.

“All of it?”

“All of _you_.”

“That’s…” he trailed off. She tongued his knuckles, finding the crevices and dipping between them.

His eyes widened, the pupils seeming to dwarf the irises. She smiled in satisfaction.

An idea struck her. She turned his hand, his first two fingers the focus of her attention, their pads at her lips.

Her tongue explored them, the hard nails, neatly cared for, thick callus and the softer skin between the two where they joined the rest of this hand.

He seemed to be having trouble breathing. They would never make it to the bed at this rate.

She scraped her teeth down his skin, and let him go. “How about the wall?” she asked. “We don’t really need a bed for this, do we?”

He only blinked at her, so she showed him. “Right here,” she said, moving him back.

The wall shielding him, the light switch rested a foot from his head. She guided his damp hand to it.

“Any time you want, all right?”

Reluctantly, his arm dropped away.

She kissed him, her fingers raking down his sides. He was as thin as any man she’d ever met, but wiry and well-formed. She was glad he’d left the lights on.

She had a destination in mind, but she kept getting distracted on the way. The hollow of his collarbone and the peaks of his dusky nipples, their texture on her tongue, and the way his hips bucked when she tugged them with her teeth.

She would wait to see the other side of him later. She wanted to watch the muscles, the hard ridge of his spine, and the way his rear filled out his trousers, or what those trousers hid.

Yesterday, she'd been so distracted by his scars that she'd forgotten the rest of him.

A thin trail of body hair led from his belly to his cock, eager and ready between them.

She’d seen that angle, pleasing as it was; she wanted a different one.

She sunk to her knees on the paneled floor so she wouldn’t have to bend, the velvet head of his cock at just the right level.

She heard Rumplestiltskin’s head hit the wall, and looked up.

“Rumple?”

He smiled at her weakly, and caressed her hair with a hand that trembled. The hand closest to the light switch, she noted.

She started with her hands the way he’d shown her not so long ago, but it was different from down here.

A small drop of moisture beaded on the head; she licked it, rolled the flavour around her mouth, and heard him groan.

That was a good sound, she knew. She’d made that one quite a few times at his hands.

The taste of that liquid was not offensive, so she drew him into her mouth as she had his fingers. His hips jerked at that. She could see how that might be a problem, and knelt up to hold him against the wall, her weight on her hands.

That was better. His hands in her hair spasmed when she found something he liked, and she learned to tell by the tremors.

He liked the suction. He liked when she reached under him to find the tight sack of flesh that drew up when he was aroused, rolling it in her hand.

And he liked her teeth when she scraped him--gently.

If he was as sensitive as she in that area, this made sense to her.

His hips bucked stronger now, and she pulled back to allow him to thrust, his hands firmer in her hair. She wished she dared take more of him in; he made the most delicious noises when she did, slowly, as she learned the way he fit her mouth. But that would have to come later; now she wrapped her hand around him, the foreskin sliding inside her grip.

Then he tried to push her away. What? No! She hung on to her prize, confused.

Oh. Well, that wasn’t so bad. She’d tasted it on him when he’d licked it from her skin.

He slumped against the wall, staring down at her in disbelief.

Maybe they’d make it to the bed, now. She wanted to see the rest of him.

~

He followed willingly enough, when he’d regained his breath, allowed her to wrap her arm about his waist for the short distance, and left the light switch on the wall untouched.

He’d hinted that most men didn’t have the capacity to entertain a woman ‘for as long as she deserved.’

That meant he might be tired, maybe.

She wasn’t above coaxing him when lassitude dragged at his body and made him pliant to her will.

She knelt on the edge of the bed to kiss him leisurely, taller than him for the very first time and enjoying the ability to bear down on his mouth and take what she wanted.

He moaned into her, the flavor of him still on her tongue, and obligingly crawled after her when she shuffled backwards.

Here on the bed, his weight off of his foot, he was as nimble as any other man but for the weariness that seemed to pull him towards the earth.

She stopped him near the middle, encouraged him to sit up in the full light of the electric lamps. He shivered under her touch, but calmer now that he was spent.

“I was so looking forward to seeing more of you again,” she said.

His eyes averted, his mouth quirked. “I would hate to let you down.”

She kissed the quirk, and would have straddled him, but thought better of it and nudged her knee between his instead.

He watched her scoop up his balls and softened cock as though worried she would be disappointed, his gaze darting up to hers.

“All of you, Rumplestiltskin,” she said, and weighed him in her hand. She wanted to know what he looked like this way as well, and compared them, her fingers reaching underneath to investigate the wrinkled texture of his balls.

He was slowly hardening, the wrinkles smoothing out. Perhaps he’d underestimated himself.

She drew him by the shoulder closer still, until he rested upon her thigh and she on his. He didn’t put much of his weight on his other side, but leaned towards her to keep off of his bad leg.

She’d been correct, then. “Is this way better?” she asked him.

He seemed surprised to find his comfort considered in this context. His brown eyes searched hers, puzzled.

She’d like to find the woman who’d put that doubt in him and squish her.

After a moment he dropped his gaze. “One can only look into the sun for so long,” he murmured.

She kissed that quirk again, curled around him and shifted his hair to bare his neck, her lips travelling along his jaw.

Too close to his shoulder, and he stilled. She stroked his hair, her nails finding his scalp in slow circular scratches. A shiver, and he breathed. Warm air met her skin; he nuzzled her in reassurance. She held him, rolled his balls in her palm, learned the texture of him, his soft gasp that hitched his chest against hers.

Unhurried, she left his hair for the nape of his neck, and then his back, slow circles, the long ridge of his spine.

What she really wanted, she mused, was to see all of him in full daylight, and every kind of light imaginable.

He twitched and shifted, but did not refuse her.

She knew he wouldn’t understand, though, so she bided her time and revelled in the skin-to-skin contact. She pressed closer; one of his arms wound tentatively about her waist.

Up again, the side of his ribs, back to the scars he'd been so certain would frighten her away.

“There is more to this story," she said. "One day, when you are ready, I should like to hear it.”

His hips had begun to rock; she wrapped him in her hand; he slid easily through her loose hold.

Words came ragged. “You have too much faith in me.”

In the short time she'd known him, she'd come to believe it not misplaced.

The moving pressure of his thigh under her pelvis felt good to her; she ground herself into him. He gasped at her tightening hand, and reached under her to swipe between her folds with his fingers.

She ground onto those too, stroking him as he’d shown her, feeling him fill under her hand with gratifying speed.

He parted her folds, but it wasn’t enough. She felt hollow inside.

“Rumple….”

She wanted him.

Quite suddenly, she found herself on her back, his hips driving himself into her, the hollow feeling filled and giving her something to clench down upon.

She fought to spread herself wider; she wanted him deeper. He obliged, hooking her legs over his arms and forcing them apart.

Oh, there.

She sobbed, and pulled him closer, her mouth seeking his.

He’d come quickly yesterday, and finished her with his fingers, but now… she clung to him, waves breeching her, her nails leaving long scratches down his shoulders.

He stilled in her just as the waves began to ebb, warm and solid where she had been hollow.

She slumped back against the bed, gasping for breath.

They stared at each other, their breath mingling between them

“So it’s the third time, is it?” she asked.

He fell on her mouth hungrily, let her legs fall to the bed.

“I didn’t think I had that in me,” he said, when he’d released her.

“Worn out, are you?” she asked him wickedly.

“A bit?” he said sheepishly.

She pushed him off of her. “I’ll clean up.”

He couldn’t do anything but nod.

She found him on his front when she returned, fast asleep. There were shrinking marks on him, she noted with dismay. They contrasted with the existing scars, pink fading over pale jagged lines.

She’d wanted to see the rest of him, and now she had it. She dabbed at him, and her stomach twisted; the white cloth was stained. Carefully, she cleaned the surrounding areas,,drawing a sleepy murmur from him.

“Turn for me?” she asked, wondering if he were awake enough. He obeyed her, though, and she cleaned his front as well.

His eyes blinked open at the feel of the warm cloth on his softened cock.

She kissed his temple, and went to rinse the cloth in the sink.

~


	9. Chapter 9

They napped for a long time.

Much later that evening as they were preparing a meal, Belle found a lightweight book-shaped box hidden in the refrigerator, a note from Morraine stuck on top of it.

She pulled it out, puzzled. She’d never seen food in this land contained in something that looked like this.

_Belle_ , the note read. _I wanted you to know that we are thrilled to welcome you to our family._

_Make the best of the time, because we will be back before you know it. Ian still hasn’t learned to knock on bedroom doors, I’m afraid. He gets that from his father._

_I’d tell you what the box does, but I wouldn’t want to steal Rum’s fun._

_Love from all of us,_  
_Morraine_

She showed the note to Rumplestiltskin. He laughed when he saw the title on the box.

“The man with seven children?” His eyes crinkled. “That sounds like something Morrie would pick.”

He led her to the picture frame over the mantle which contained nothing but dark, perfectly smooth glass, beautiful in itself but utterly mystifying.

She’d thought it was similar to the computers she’d seen, but much bigger.

“It makes images that move,” he said. “They tell stories, like a play.”

He pressed a button, and the glass flickered, then lit. A woman appeared in the frame, speaking briskly but silently, a moving bar of text beneath.

~

After dinner, still worn out but not sleepy, they settled before a low fire, surrounded by mountains of thick blankets and pillows.

“We can stop the story any time you want a break,” he said. “It will keep, and we can come back to it.”

“How long is the play?”

“Usually much shorter. This one is…” he checked the box, “Three hours.”

~

Midway through, they stopped--no, ‘paused’ the play. Returning to him, Belle found the countertop cooker humming, a staccato popping that sounded like tiny explosions coming from within.

He turned at her approach, seeming unperturbed by the noise. His eyes crinkled at her puzzlement.

He was laughing, she was sure of it.

Cautiously, she said, “It _smells_ good. What is it?”

~

Wrapped in blankets and ensconced once more, she laid her hand over his.

“Rumple, I hurt you, this afternoon.”

He caught the wobbling bowl and frowned. “You did?”

“Near… ah, the end.” She made a clawing gesture, her cheeks heating.

His breath hitched, and then his gaze lowered. Was he afraid to tell her that she’d injured him?

She set the bowl upon the low table, and took his far hand into her lap, covered it with both of hers.

“I made you bleed, Rumple.” What kind of wife harmed her husband in their bed?

He looked up in concern at the misery in her voice.

“Belle?” Appalled, he said, “No, no, sweetheart.”

At her confusion, he plunged ahead. “I liked it.”

Oh.

He wasn’t afraid--he was ashamed.

“I wasn’t this way, before the curse. I wouldn’t have… I’m sorry, Belle.”

He was apologising to her? She felt as though her world had turned on its ear.

“Wouldn’t have what?”

His hand in hers twitched. He opened his mouth as if to answer, but then closed it. He _was_ afraid, but not for the reason she’d thought.

She tightened her hold on him. “I chose you--over any other.”

Hope, fragile and raw. 

She kissed the corner of his mouth. “I will continue to choose you, for the rest of my life.”

His eyes gone glassy, he ducked his head. His cheek to hers, he whispered, “I wouldn’t have understood why… why it felt good.”

Damp white fabric, stained pink, angry scrapes over older scars. She didn’t understand, but thought perhaps it did no harm.

She needed him closer.

A turn of the head, and she found him, butter and salt on his lips. She licked it from him, peeled their blankets away to climb into his lap, and sunk her hands into his hair.

His tongue against hers, hesitantly. Closer, his sharp hipbones between her thighs. His hair, gathered in one hand.

Slowly, she twisted it.

He grunted, eyes closing against the pain. Tighter, and they flew wide.

Disbelieving brown, watering. He gasped into her mouth, his tongue pliant under hers. That sound like a wounded animal--she wanted to consume it, held his head immobile, her mouth over his.

Enough--she had no stomach to truly hurt him. Her hands in his hair gentled, massaged where she’d pulled. He moaned.

Softly, petting him, “Is this you now?” she asked.

Cat-like, he leaned into her hands, his eyes narrow slits. Had he heard her? One lock wrapped in a curl about her finger; she tugged, lightly.

Blinking, he refocused on her, the sun breaking through clouds. Shyly, he caught her hand and pressed his mouth to her wrist.

“The magic changed me,” he answered. “Even without it, the changes linger. I am not… I am not the same person that I was.”

Who had he been? she wondered.

“I like the person that you are.”

The surprise in him broke her heart.

She'd known men to boast, to strut and swagger; Rumplestiltskin cherished her, she who’d been a stranger only days ago. She _wanted_ to love him, wanted what she’d seen possible in other couples. Children’s tales and myth, fancy and fable.

He dimpled when he smiled, small puckers that she chased with her tongue, delighted.

Fairy tales--that’s what they called them here, although fairies had little to do with most of them. She and he were born in a land of stories and legend.

He rewrapped her blanket, tucked it by her calves, and hesitantly pulled her closer, her arms wrapping comfortably around his waist.

Settled against his bare chest, she asked, “Who were you, before the curse?”

It was upside-down and inside-out, to be asking this after they’d married.

He seemed to think so as well, for he huffed a rueful laugh into her hair. “Perhaps you should ask my son and Morraine.”

She hummed. “Might I, when they return?”

“Of course.”

He’d taken her into his family so completely, even before she’d agreed to marry him.

“That’s a week from now,” she complained to his shoulder.

He was quiet, drawing slow lines up and down her back. “I was a father, first,” he said. “The tern coward.”

His accent lay thick on the last words, as they might have been then, their ache lingering but perhaps not as painful tonight.

If she spoke now, she feared he might not continue. She rested against him and listened, the last glow of the setting sun fading into night outside the enormous windows.

“But a man, as ordinary as any other. If nothing else, I’ve gained some perspective. The Dark Ones go back centuries.”

Up and down; he was lulling her into sleep. Comfortable for the moment, she knew she would be stiff, if she slept this way.

A hint of awe crept into his voice. “There’s so much _time_ involved, Belle. History so distant as tae surpass any written record.”

She loved books--she did, but even they had limits.

“I know things I should not,” he murmured. “I know exactly how far the human body can bend… and where it breaks.”

So softly she could barely hear him: “What it feels like to break.”

She shivered, and he soothed her, apology in his touch.

Lips to his bared shoulder, her open mouth in the curve of his throat. She nipped him, and tongued the spot she’d injured.

The sleeve of his robe was soft between her thighs. She caught his wrist, gently.

“But not,” she teased, “to wash the popcorn from one’s hands.”

~

“How close are your… our neighbours?” she asked him after breakfast the next morning. She’d seen no one about, and those windows… he never seemed to worry who might be peering inside.

“A mile or two,” he answered.

A house this grand and no one closer than a mile? It boggled her mind. “No one drops by unannounced?”

“They’re all oot of turn,” he said. “Why?”

She caught him by the collar of his robe and kissed him. “I didn’t get nearly enough of you yesterday.”

He laughed, and eyed her warily. “Wha’ dae ye wan’, Belle?”

All of him, in every light imaginable. She wanted, but not if it frightened him.

It was far too chilly outside. Late fall was preparing to give way to winter here, turning cold with startling speed. She led him over to the window instead, the same one she’d felt so uncertain of the night before. It streamed sunlight and she turned his back to it.

He frowned at her, puzzled.

Do the brave thing…. 

She kissed him, his mouth opening to her, and dropped her robe. It fell from her shoulders to land upon the floor, stirring up a draft around their feet.

His eyes opened. He stared. “Belle?”

She offered him a small smile, his growing hardness pressing his bathrobe into her bare front.

“I couldn’t ask anything like this of you if I weren’t willing to do it myself,” she said, even knowing it was not the same. He'd been so terribly reluctant to show her in the shop. How long had it been since anyone else had seen those scars?

_I was married once--to Bae’s mother. I tried to make her happy. She… she wasn’t. After I returned from the war, she was ashamed of me_.

Did the others know? Did Baelfire?

She asked so much of him. Uncertainly, she stepped back so he could see her, feeling exposed in the sunlight. She turned, his eyes on her, watched him over her shoulder.

He ogled her. This was right, and good. He was hers.

He swallowed. “Belle, you’re….” He couldn’t find the words he needed. “I’m not.”

She wanted to find that woman and _squish_ her.

She returned to him and slowly untied his robe, his erection peeking out to brush the soft head against her abdomen.

He drew in a ragged breath, and let the robe fall open just the tiniest bit.

“You are my husband,” she said firmly, sliding her hands inside to explore the shape of his chest, “and I say you are.”

Still he hesitated. She rubbed her thumbs over his nipples, making him grunt and close his eyes as if in pain.

“Does anyone else’s opinion matter?” she asked. Cautiously, she repeated the motion.

He shuddered. Slowly, he shook his head.

He was frightened, and did not yet know if she would mock him. It would do no good to simply tell him.

“Shall I see if I can make you forget?” She rolled his nipples between her fingers and watched his face. It was as though one of those electric wires ran a current directly from her fingers to his cock.

He’d begun to pant. She pulled them, lightly. He yelped, and his eyes flew open, beautiful brown staring into hers.

“Do you want me to stop?” she asked him softly.

A definite negative.

“You forgot the lamp last night,” she pointed out, hopeful. He was more resilient than they knew.

“I never forgot,” he argued weakly. “It… was nae longer impor’ant.”

She'd been right! She kissed him, his cock hard against her. He might not give her much time to practice.

She sank down to take him into her mouth, following him when he leaned against the window. She knew what to do this time, what to expect, the shape of him becoming familiar over her tongue, against the roof of her mouth, between her lips, inside her hand around the base.

She tongued inside his foreskin and held on when he tried to push her away.

She didn’t know why he made such a fuss. She pulled him down to her on the floor, after, and kissed him with his juices still lingering in her mouth. He moaned.

As if it were the natural conclusion to the act, he slid down her body and set his mouth to her sex, the glass cool where it met her shoulder.

She arched up into him, her feet flat against the floor, her toes curling.

This would be nicer in a bed, surely, but she wanted what she wanted, and she wanted to see him, every part of him, in daylight.

She had until sunset; she didn’t want to wait another night.

~

He rested his head on her inner thigh, after, his arm tucked under her leg, and watched her from there. Her curls were wet with his saliva and her juices. She propped herself on her elbows to see him look his fill, his damp fingers slowly exploring the texture of her skin, the dips to either side and the sharp jut of her pelvic bones.

She wasn’t the only one curious.

He looked up to see her watching, and paused.

“It’s all right,” she whispered, as though he were a wild squirrel, as like to bound away as stay.

She wanted him to eat from her hand.

He dropped his eyes, and sought her skin through her curls, raking up through them as though enjoying the texture, tugging lightly and twining them in his fingers.

Her abdomen rippled. He did it again, spread her sex and watched her spasm.

His eyes flicked up to hers, intelligent and attentive.

“Rumple…”

His fingers slid inside her, hooking behind bone as she arched. He had trouble seeing her face when he put his mouth on her, and while her head wanted to fall back, she thought he might be disappointed.

He still wore that bathrobe. It had fallen down the shoulder, baring skin in a tantalizing glimpse of pale muscle and clavicle, dusky nipple that she’d teased.

“You know,” he said, his thumb circling leisurely at the top of her sex. “Our neighbors are quite far away.”

He drove his fingers into her, making her gasp. He did it again, and murmured slyly, looking up at her through his lashes, “That means we can make as much noise as we like.”

His fingers scissored her, a third fitting inside and thrusting. Crow’s feet crinkled at her louder response.

Again.

Pleased, he rubbed over that bundle of nerves inside, thrust as far as his fingers would go, twisted them and pried her apart.

It hurt. It was wonderful.

Her head tipped back despite herself, her chest heaving. She’d never heard that noise before.

~

They lay on their sides on the floor, and the sun rose higher. Their shadows shortened, his hair taking on a warm red in the light from the window.

If this took too much longer, she was going to sneak off and build up the fire in the hearth.

Her nails scratched in light circles over his shoulder, savouring the small victory and slipping her fingers beneath the edge to widen the margin.

He knew exactly what she was doing, but he only smiled and lay pliant in her arms. The protest came when the sleeve caught, pulling him away from her.

Their eyes locked. Would he trust her with this?

They compromised.

He withdrew his arm from the sleeve but pulled it back over his shoulder like a blanket, burrowing into her for comfort.

She _would_ need to build up the fire if she were to maintain her advantage later.

She kissed him, slow and tender; his mouth trembled with old wounds.

He was hard again.

She rolled him and mounted him, the robe falling away from that side. She would have preferred a softer surface under her knees, but she would manage.

She would win. It wasn’t her curiosity at stake anymore. It was him.

Satiated, she rested on him after he’d come, enjoying the feel of him in her and not willing to let go. If she stayed here, he would not slip out.

She began to work on the other shoulder.

His eyes opened sleepily. “Why is this impor’ant tae ye, Belle?”

She'd distressed him, and yet he had not rebuffed her. How could she demand this of him? She left off with his robe and laid her palm upon his cheek.

“Because _you_ are important to me.”

She wasn’t ready to say that word yet. Who was she to believe love would come for her? She’d been engaged to a man she barely knew, back in the other land, and fully expected to go through life merely surviving.

But she wanted it for her husband; she would not pretend otherwise.

No longer sleepy, he watched her, frowning. “Important?”

She leaned down to kiss him, his cock securely held within her. He’d softened, but if she was careful….

He squeezed her hand. When had he taken it? “‘Important’ is more than I could have asked for.”

She wouldn’t let that woman come between them. He was hers. She clutched the collar of his robe in her hand and bit his lip.

He whined into her mouth.

“Mine,” she said.

“All of me,” he replied.

~

He let her remove the robe after that, watched her admire him in the sunlight.

Disbelief gave way to puzzlement.

She pulled him to his feet and he left the robe behind, wary and ready to bolt at the first negative sign.

They’d abandoned the cane in the kitchen area. She steadied him and led him back to the window, his hand bracing himself against the glass.

She would have liked to see him erect in the sun again; she’d been too distracted last time. There would be another chance for that, she promised herself.

Here, the sun played on his hair, bringing out highlights she hadn’t seen before.

He watched her reach up to tuck the strands behind his ear, her hand lingering.

“Was this red, once?” she asked, her nails scratching at his scalp.

He shivered. “Once,” he said. “I’m ain ol’ man now.”

She tugged his hair in rebuke, and he smiled.

“‘S’truth. A dirty old man.”

He’d been in this land for at least a hundred years. She knew which battles to pick.

“Fine. My dirty old man.” She kissed the corner of his mouth and stepped back. He ducked his head under her scrutiny. 

She released his hair to gently raise his chin. “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of,” she scolded.

He obeyed her with a sigh. “I’m tae be henpecked,” he complained, but there was no ire in it.

“If you like.”

She tapped his hunched shoulder, his curled abdomen, and laid her hand possessively in the middle of his chest when he straightened.

There he was. She gloated with her victory.

He tossed his hair from his cheek, smirked at her and stole a kiss. “If it pleases you.”

Oh yes. It pleased her very much. She decided then and there that she would never fail to let him see the hunger in her.

Starting now.

It was magical, the change that came over him. She shivered with awe. _She’d_ done that.

Something softened in his bearing at her shiver. He was worried for her, perhaps?

“Ach!” she admonished him playfully, an expression she’d learned from him.

He laughed. “You wish me arrogant?”

“An offensive, exaggerated sense of one's own worth or abilities?” she shot back.

His consternation at that was truly adorable. She giggled, and kissed him. “Mine.”

Warily, he watched her circle him, lost sight of her when she stepped behind him. He craned his neck to peer at her.

She kissed the corner of his mouth and turned his head. “You’ll give yourself a crick.”

His hair ended at his shoulders in soft waves, providing her an unobstructed view of the rest of him in the sun. He wasn’t bulky like some men of her acquaintance, but slight of frame, wiry under the scars. She wondered again at the man he’d been before he’d taken on his curse and come to this land.

Now he stood as though confident, and she hoped that one day it would cease to be a pretence he put on for her.

‘Begin as you mean to go on,’ was another of the phrases her mother had taught her. She’d never missed her more than now. There were a thousand questions she would ask her if she could, a thousand more that she couldn’t because they would scandalize her.

She gathered his hair in her hands, kissed the back of his neck, released his hair and allowed it to fall in silky drifts over her cheek, smoothed her hands down his shoulders and breathed in the scent of him. Following the sharp bones of his hips, she traced the line of them and pulled his back to her front, her hands framing his cock, her lips at his nape.

“Shower with me?” she asked him, and kept him from turning.

He huffed.

“Will we get much bathing done?”

She licked his neck. “I have fluids all over me,” she complained.

His back shook. She thought he might be laughing, and a kind of relief made her giddy. He'd done it! They stood in sunlight together, not a stitch between them.

“An’ who’s faul’ is that?” he asked.

“I do recall your assistance in the matter.” She let him turn.

~

The engineers of this land manipulated the flow of water in ways Belle would have never dreamed possible.

The bathrobes stayed by the window in the other part of the house. Getting fully dressed that morning had seemed silly.

No matter, he said. There were more, over there, but she hadn’t worked so hard to see him unclothed only to lose the ground she’d fought for.

He hesitated. There was a package coming in the mail tomorrow, he said. He’d ordered it before breakfast. No one came around to the side with the windows, of course, but….

“Until tomorrow, then.” She seized the advantage she could.

His computer would tell him exactly when, he agreed. If he remembered to check it. The phone was banished to the kitchen for the week.

~

He insisted on an apron when she wanted to stand at the stove, her breasts peeking out around the edges, the overlong ties trailing between her buttocks. He twitched the ties when he went past, and they tickled her skin.

He led her to his chair before the hearth after the meal. At some point while she wasn’t looking, he’d laid their bathrobes over the seat, a pillow at its back, and placed the cushion of the other chair at the foot of it for his knees

“Why do you always choose my chair?” he asked, pausing next to it.

“It smells good,” she replied.

Surprise made his mouth go soft, his tongue pliant under hers.

When she released him, he guided her onto the edge of the chair, the bathrobes soft under her bare skin. He knelt at the foot, on the cushion he’d left there. “If we’re not careful, he said, untying the apron behind her, “it will smell like you, for a very long time.”

“I’d rather our family didn’t know exactly what we were doing while they were away,” she grumbled.

She’d sat upon the apron’s ties, but Rumplestiltskin only pulled their bow loose so there was no longer an uncomfortable knot behind her.

“I’ve been thinking about this since you put the apron on,” he told her, laying her back. He spread her breasts around the bib, her nipples hardening under his curious hands.

“Is that why you wanted it?”

The chair did smell like him, she thought as he flipped up the apron’s front.

He blew cool air across her sex, making her jerk and spasm. “I didn’t want you to get burned. This is just--” he carefully moved the ties from under her rear to either side of her curls and up over the crease of her thighs, then grinned at her.

“--an added benefit.”

His fingers brushed along her folds, and her breath hitched. He helped her to raise her knees, her arms looping into them

Exposed, she felt her arousal heighten, but he took his time, drawing his fingers up through her.

He left her empty then, and gently untangled some of the short hairs that had got caught in the apron’s ties. She wondered what he wanted with them, until he reached around her hips to take up the strings that trailed there, and slowly pulled, watching her face all the while.

It was strange, not painful, nor restrictive, but it drew her thighs apart and gave him better access to what he wanted.

What he wanted, it seemed, was to drive her mad with frustration.

“All right?” he asked.

She wasn’t sure, but she nodded. It felt secure, and the ties pressed on a pair of tendons where her legs met her curls. She liked the pressure.

She wondered, fleetingly, if he tried things of a type he thought he’d like, but was afraid to ask for.

She wished she knew more. There were so many books in the library here, surely there might be a medical text or two.

He made her forget books, after that.

~

She told him so, later, and he shrugged as if the skill were nothing. “I tried everything I could to please her, Belle.” His eyes fell to the floor. “ _Everything_ , but it was never enough.”

“It pleases me,” she said, and did her very best to kiss the hurt from him.

~

In a nearby city, Michael’s cell chirped. He read the text and laughed.

“Grandpa says to knock if we come back early. Just this once.”

Baelfire paled, his fork rattling onto his plate.

Morraine’s shoulders shook.

“‘S’not funny,” he grumbled. “I think he enjoys tormenting me.”

Michael grinned. “Which is why he sent this--” he waggled the phone and put it away “--to me and not you.”

Morraine glanced down the table. Ian was busy scribbling with a set of crayons.

“Perhaps it’s time we had that talk with someone about doors.”

Baelfire put his head in his hands.

Michael shook his head. “I’ll do it.”

~

The light shifted to the other side of the house, crept across the floor from the windows next to Morraine’s loom and his wheel.

Belle brought Rumplestiltskin there and sat at his feet.

He asked why.

“I want to watch you,” she said, the afternoon sun glowing on their bare skin.

He moved her hair so it wouldn’t get caught, and she set her back to the wheel.

She had books from the library, and paged through them as he spun, three strands plying evenly between his fingers from full bobbins set in a rack. The wheel’s flyer wound the plied yarn onto a new spool, the twist he’d set in the first step wrapping against itself, balanced and quiescent in its place.

There were many of the bobbins in his basket, no billowy fleece today.

She sat on the side without the pedal, his mangled foot laid trustingly against her arm. He was wary of things that jostled him, the old injury badly healed, even after the benefit of his magic.

Pale white scars cut across the arch, the larger bones in his ankle forming lumps where there should be none, hollows where there should be flesh.

She felt a pang at the sight; she’d asked him to go without clothing, and that included footwear. She’d seen the inside of the shoes he wore; one was oddly shaped, and she thought perhaps it made walking easier for him.

He caught the direction of her gaze, and his rhythm faltered.

She turned her head to peer up at him.

“Are you all right without the shoes?” she asked.

Guarded, he tucked her hair away from the flyer’s hooked reach. “For today, yes.”

She closed her book and brought his curled fingers to her lips. His thumb brushed down the side of her nose.

"I do want all of you, Rumple."

He was too far away for her, but he bent to lay his mouth over hers, held her head in his hands. She gripped his wrist while he kissed her, hoping she had not pushed too far, too soon. Had she tasted tears, just now? There was something in the tremble of his mouth that warned of grief, or fear.

His forehead rested over hers. She was lost to him.

Bravely, "I want… I want to," he said. "I want--"

He placed her hand upon his calf, a safe distance from the marred flesh.

He'd been so afraid for her to see his scars. For now she only touched him. Her fingers skimmed downward in slow circles, through the soft hairs and over the misshapen ruin of his heel.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, his worried eyes on hers as she felt her way across the damage.

His hand was back in her hair. He shook his head.

"Not at the moment."

Under the arch, then. She lifted his foot into her lap and settled closer.

"Is this all right?"

He swallowed, and bent to press a kiss into her hair.

After a minute, the wheel started up again.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The inspiration for the apron comes from LicieOIC's magnificent nsfw digital painting 'Rumple's Favorite Dessert' hosted on deviant art here: <https://www.deviantart.com/licieoic/art/Rumple-s-Favorite-Dessert-547274745>.


	10. Chapter 10

Rumplestiltskin wasn’t one to sit idle. His hands busy at his wheel, he allowed his thoughts to drift. He glanced at Belle occasionally, but she let him be, his ankle resting on her abdomen, her book on her far knee.

He and Belle had dived in headfirst, and found the waters safe. More than safe; she healed him.

He'd never spun without a stitch of clothing; he would never have dared.

Between pages, her hand settled on his foot. He twitched every time it happened, his rhythm would skip, and he’d be untangling yarn and backtracking.

No adult but the podiatrists had touched his foot since that mishap with the mirror in George's shop. He wouldn’t have gone to see the first doctor, if his son hadn’t insisted. Baelfire had been curious, when he was small, and then his grandchildren also in recent years, but they didn’t know any better.

He remembered well the day Milah had caught Bae asking him about it. It was right before she left.

He didn’t want Belle’s touch to bother him.

_Mine_ , Belle had said. He’d never known anyone to be possessive of him.

Her touch didn’t hurt--he liked it, once he could stifle the fear.

Back and forth. She’d turn a page, and he’d twitch. He learned to pause the wheel when her hand left him.

Many repetitions later, he found he’d stopped shying away at last, and the wheel no longer slowed whenever she turned a page. He had the fleeting thought that he’d been conditioned like a rat.

When she closed her book and would have reached for another, he stopped his wheel and leaned down to capture her lips, her scalp warm in his hand.

The wheel was in his way. It was solid, but not heavy, so he turned it aside with a scrape of wood on wood, his hands returning to her hair.

She rose up on her knees, her curls tickling his ruined ankle, then up his shin, and hooked her dainty fingers in the cleft of his arse.

He huffed a startled breath into her mouth.

“All right?” she murmured against his chin.

He wanted her, again and again.

“I’ll be a wrung-out rag by the time our family returns,” he said, and it made her laugh.

She chose one of his finished spools then, and laid it against his other leg, looking up at him.

A small tremor started in his hands. She _had_ picked up on that. He pressed his forehead to hers.

The cows and the snow and the caged seer-child. Everything hurt more in the cold.

“I’m afraid to,” he answered her unspoken query, “but I want you to.”

The ash and the keep and the Dark One's blade. A slave who became his mentor.

It wasn't really Zozo, he knew that, but it wore his face. Centuries of memory, every Dark One who lost control of their dagger, the details of every end.

He wanted more than anything to be able to trust her--instinctively, without question, and with every part of him. George and Mary Darling had had that; his son and Morraine had it. He knew it was possible. He didn’t know if it was possible for _him_.

She didn’t rush him. Instead, she offered her mouth for his kiss until he released her.

Then she laced his good calf to the bench, wound the spool in a score of careful wraps, her hands brushing his skin. Midway through, she paused.

“I shouldn’t have used your good yarn,” she apologized. “This will take forever to undo.”

He shrugged, shifted. “I wouldn’t have wanted to wait for something else.”

She nipped his chin.

“What makes you think you’re not going to wait?”

A smile played at his lips. Belle didn’t have it in her to be cruel, not like he did. “There’s scissors in the basket.”

“I can’t cut this!” she protested.

He laughed, and had to kiss her. Belle had chosen the blue that he’d made with her in mind.

“It will be perfect for fringe,” he told her. She would know exactly where it had been. Mischievously, he added, “You can use more of it.”

She shook her head, but soon moved on to his other calf, repeating the process there.

He was fully erect by the time she was done. He drew her to him and greedily devoured her mouth, tested the wraps holding him, and found them secure.

“Good?” she asked him. She slid a finger under them to verify their tension. They wouldn’t damage him, but he watched her and knew why she checked.

He was important to her, she’d said.

She was far more than ‘important’ to him.

She was everything, and he wanted her.

“Please, Belle?”

“Please, what?” she wanted to know.

He swallowed. “I….” He didn’t know how to ask. Couldn’t. Didn’t dare. The vague request was as close as he could come.

She took pity on him, though, and wrapped her hands around him. “One of these days I _will_ get you to ask me.”

She wanted him to ask her?

She was plotting something, a speculative gleam in her eye. She cradled him in one hand and placed the back of the other on the vulnerable inside of his thigh, held open for her. He shuddered at the touch, the softer skin there oversensitized by his inability to protect it.

Her hand turned, and one nail scratched him, her gaze fastened to his face.

He’d begun to pant, his hips jerking.

She fisted his cock and scratched him again, harder.

He whined, his head falling back to bare his throat.

She bit him, and he came.

~

The scissors were cold when they touched his calf. Dazed, he looked down at her, her head bent over his knee, her hair in dark contrast to her pale complexion.

She stored away the scraps of yarn in a neat stack, and checked his thigh where she’d scratched him, his throat where she’d bitten him. There was nothing left of the marks by now.

Her breasts and belly were spattered with come. His come. He led her to their bathroom and cleaned it from her, a warm cloth swabbing at the areas he’d soiled.

A plush rug laid before the sink; her toes curled into it.

“Thank you,” he murmured as he worked, so he didn’t have to meet her eyes.

But she wouldn’t let it go at that. She reached up and sunk her fingers into his hair.

“I wasn’t brave enough to ask,” he explained, when she stayed silent.

“You liked it, then?” she asked. Cautiously, her hand slid down to lay across the back of his neck.

His lips traced the line of her nose. “It felt safe.” This felt safe.

If he told her that he loved her, would she think him strange?

He must be a monster, to lay claim to a woman he’d only known for a span of days. It hadn’t even been a week now since he’d met her.

The alternative, of losing her to someone else, had been unacceptable.

He washed out the cloth in the sink and worked lower.

“You didn’t get any there,” she said, as he wiped it down the side of her breast.

His head now bent, he glanced up through his lashes. She was smiling.

“I didn’t?”

There was a long drip on the inside of her other breast; he cleaned that, and passed the cloth through the crease below.

She took his hands; he lowered himself to his knees. She kept him from falling.

There was more on her abdomen; it went the way of the rest, and he set the cloth aside, wrapping his arms about her waist and pressing his face into her soft flesh.

He hadn’t got all of his come off of her; he could still smell it, and set to work licking the traces from her skin.

Her nipples, rosy pink, were nearly at eye level. He craned his neck to reach the underside of her breast with his mouth. She shivered and curled over him, obligingly putting herself closer to him. He savored the texture of her, felt her nipple tighten under his tongue, and teased it with the tip, the sounds of her pleasure goading him.

Her hands in his hair, she held him to her; he stayed where she wanted, suckled and licked until she moved him to the next. Her stifled gasp was a half-stolen reward.

He would have looked up at her, but she’d leaned over him so far that she could no longer see him. He turned his head away instead, her grip loosening, and she straightened to see him.

He tilted his head. “No neighbours,” he reminded her. He wanted her nipple back in his mouth; but he’d been cheated of that gasp, he wanted it as well.

“It’s going to be difficult to remember to keep quiet when the others return,” she argued.

“Mmm, there are always options.”

She made a sound the likes of which he’d never heard. “Dirty old man.”

He laughed.

She pulled him to his feet. “I’d like to do this in a bed this time, if you don’t mind.”

“Do what?” he asked. “Someone spoiled my fun.”

She kissed him, but he could wait now.

“That’s the last time I let you come outside of me for a while.” She watched him as she said it, taking in the way his nose flared, and the sound of his groan.

He wasn’t sure about the waiting, anymore. He followed her.

~

In their bed, he tried a different tactic. When she stifled her cries, his mouth on her slowed. He still got what he wanted, but she knew what he was doing, and was happy to give it. Over and over again.

The instinct wasn’t easy to beat. He could be persuasive.

There was a muffled comment about a ‘silver tongue.’

“Pretty sure they do make those in sterling,” he said.

She arched her back and squeaked.

“Make what?” she panted.

“Tongues,” he said, and thrust his into her. Above him, she bit her lip.

“In any case, I’ve got all the equipment in my shop,” he paused to inform her.

She dragged him back to her.

“It would need regular polishing, of course.”

“Rumple!”

That was more like it.

He had another few days to work with.

She warned him he would regret it.

Knuckle-deep in her, he said he wouldn’t.

If she could condition him into accepting her hand on his scars without flinching, he could surely coax her into making a little noise.

~


	11. Chapter 11

Belle needed to know the names of the things she was learning.

“The library has those machines, don’t they?” she asked. “Where it reads what you take home without a person seeing the titles?”

“Unfortunately, they keep records of books checked out.”

“Oh.” Yes, that could be a problem.

“There are study rooms in the back of the library,” he offered.

“Study rooms?”

“Mrs. Kirk had the town replace the walls with glass. She got tired of kicking teenagers out of them all the time.”

They stopped at Marta’s for scones, and picked out more to take with them. He looked up the call numbers on his telephone while they waited.

“I’ll distract her,” he said, tucking the pastries into his arm and opening the library door for Belle. He pecked her on the cheek. “Six-twelve. You have five minutes,” he whispered. “Ten if I can.”

Belle waved to Mrs. Kirk and walked behind the rows of shelves before looking for six hundred twelve and following the signs. She frowned at the books when she found them, thankful the library had few patrons that morning. There were so many to choose from!

Some of the titles made her face redden, but… _The Human Body: A Fascinating See-Through View of How Our Bodies Work_. She opened that one, and gasped. Pages as clear as glass layered depictions of muscle, bone, and tendon, one on top of the other.

She could hear Rumplestiltskin conversing with Mrs. Kirk, the old woman’s exclamation over the pasties they’d brought for her.

 _Body : The Complete Human : How It Grows, How It Works, and How To Keep It Healthy and Strong_.

He inquired after Mrs. Kirk’s knitting.

 _Genitality in the Theory and Therapy of Neurosis_.

“...married!” she heard her say.

Belle glanced around, snagged her choices and shoved them under her coat.

She set them on the desk in the nearest study room, their spines facing the wall.

He wore a fierce blush when he found her, shutting the heavy door with a sigh of relief. Outside sounds became muffled, and suddenly she could hear the warm draft from a vent in the floor, the rustle of clothing when he sat beside her.

“You looked like you were shoplifting.”

“Did she see me?”

“No.” He glanced over the titles she’d picked, a book of his own in his lap.

 _Knots : a step-by-step guide to tying loops, hitches, bends, and dozens of other useful knots_.

“It’s a small town,” he said. “They may not have what you’re looking for. I apologise for the poor selection.”

Poor selection. Right.

“Look at this,” she said, showing him the first book she’d found. “It’s so beautiful!” The finely detailed pictures took her breath away.

They sat with their backs to the door, their heads bent over the books she’d picked. His hair drifted over his cheek.

She found a chapter on hand structure and examined his fingers, comparing him with the picture and matching the names of each part.

Satisfied, she moved on, turning the pages reverently.

“Do you want to take this one home?” he asked. “It’s a medical text.”

She looked up from a detailed diagram of the male reproductive system.

“It is!” he said.

She set it aside for later.

The blurb on the back of the third book had a few words she’d never heard. She read it aloud, the new vocabulary delectable, the sounds gloriously precise.

"Satisfied genital object love is thus the most powerful opponent of the destructive drive, of pre-genital masochism, of yearning for the womb, and of the punitive superego. This superiority of sexuality over the destructive drive is the objective justification of our therapeutic efforts."

She slanted a glance at him.

“Window,” he reminded her.

She chewed her lip, glancing behind them. A woman herded her toddlers past on the way to the children’s section.

“We could come back later,” he suggested.

“The glass in your car, is it dark enough for privacy?”

~

The windows were well smudged by the time she was done with him.

He needed to check on something in his shop, he said. Make sure no one had broken in, that kind of thing.

She was pretty sure most customs did not allow for work so soon after marriage, but she went along with it, then ambushed him the moment they were safely in his back room.

He didn’t seem to mind.

She thought perhaps she’d worn him out. He needed no invitation, no argument to hold her afterwards now.

They napped for a long time.

Drowsy on his narrow cot, she heard him rustling about, and peered over the pillow at him.

The holster and his clothing still lay draped over a chair with hers.

He was carving something at his bench, increasingly smaller shavings falling from his knife into a bowl.

“Is that…?”

He looked up from his work, turned it over in his hand. It was made of deep blue wax, and distinctly phallic in shape.

He nicked a sliver off of the head.

“Won’t hold up,” he said. “Not like this.”

He set down the knife and approached her, dragged up a stool and offered the object to her, a wicked gleam in his eye.

“For your critique, Madam.”

From the blue phallus to his smirk, her gaze flickered, and back again.

She wanted to eat him.

“If it won’t hold up, what do you do with it?” she asked.

He flipped it in his hand, used it to trace her lower lip, ever so gently.

“You encase it in plaster, drill a hole in the plaster, bake it, let the wax run out, and fill the mould with molten silver.”

Molten. The sound of the word rolled off of his tongue.

The phallus against her lip, she murmured, “That’s a lot of silver.”

“I’d make it in gold, but it would be too heavy.”

He would, too. Her eyes on his, she licked it.

He pulled it away, set it aside. “No teeth, if you don’t mind.”

He leaned down to kiss her, his tongue seeking out those same teeth. “It won’t survive.”

She bit him. “It won’t?”

Slyly, gasping--“Not that.”

“You would, then?”

He groaned.

“Maybe. In mod--”

Her hand found him; he jerked.

“--moderation!”

~

“Silver is a relatively soft metal,” he told her over a late lunch at a small restaurant nearby. “It tolerates... shaping well.”

“Does it?”

He lowered his gaze to the table. “As long as you don’t break it.”

She took his hand in hers. He gave her a small smile.

It was strange, to see him in clothing again. He wore those collared shirts well, the line of his shoulders pleasing to her eyes.

“You will tell me, if I ask too much, won’t you?”

He hesitated.

“Rumplestiltskin?”

She’d learned that his full name had an entirely different effect upon him. No one called him that here.

He closed his eyes, his hand tense under hers. “I would give you anything you asked, if it were in my power,” he confessed.

“I might be afraid to--” he looked back up at her, “--but I would do it, if you asked.”

They hadn’t said ‘love.’ Love was for stories, and people blessed by the gods, not her.

She swallowed, rephrased. “Will you tell me, then, if you don’t like something?”

There was that flicker of doubt, that his wants ought not to be taken into consideration, but it was fleeting this time.

He picked up her hand, kissed it. “As long as you do the same for me.”

She cradled his in both of hers. “Deal.”

~

They’d been in the house for too long, Rumplestiltskin said.

He gave his cellphone to Belle, showed her how to dial the shop’s landline.

In a small town like this, Liesel's formalwear establishment carried a range of offerings, from the white gown Belle had chosen, to frocks Wendy had said were more suitable to a Sunday picnic.

His bride couldn’t have been lovelier, Rumplestiltskin told Liesel. The Monmouth and dinner, if she wouldn’t mind.

Liesel didn’t mind at all.

“Call me when you are ready.” He pecked her cheek and left her in Liesel's care.

~

“Was that the package you were waiting for?” Belle asked when they returned home. He’d been oddly secretive about it, whisking it away to another room before she could speculate on it overmuch.

“It was, that.”

“So… no one else will be visiting unannounced?”

“None that I know of.”

He knew what she was about, and didn’t object when she began to unbutton his shirt.

He preferred to leave his clothing in the bedroom, instead of all over the house.

Usually. Thursday being a notable exception.

Although--“I’m afraid you’ve quite worn me oot.” He hung the holster over a post of their bedframe.

She had indeed. It was a good look on him, relaxed and content. She kissed him, slow and sweet. Even when his body no longer kept pace with her, his touch satisfied her in a way that had nothing to do with lust.

“I’ll live, I suppose.” She started on his waistcoat. “I’d like to bathe, before we leave tonight.”

He slipped her blouse from her shoulders. “Might I join you?” he asked.

Perhaps he was beginning to accept that she wanted his company.

She beamed up at him.

~

Rumplestiltskin drew her not to the shower, but to a wide, deep basin nestled in a corner.

She blinked in surprise. “That really is a tub!” She’d thought it too big to be one.

He grinned, shy anticipation shining from him. Shirtless, he sat on the edge to start the faucets. Water roared from the pipes, clouds of steam billowing upwards.

He removed his shoes and trousers; she took them from him and laid them out of splashing range while he tested the water.

The tub was filling fast, she discovered upon returning. He held his hand out for hers.

~

Their destination was a long drive away, but they wouldn’t leave home for at least another hour.

He hadn’t yet dressed for the outing, and neither had she.

“Women take forever to get ready,” Rumplestiltskin said, pinning up her hair for her. “Men not so much.”

“That must be true In any land,” Belle agreed, watching his deft hands in the mirror. She would never have been able to do this by herself.

“You’re rather good at this,” she told him.

“I had two teenage girls under my roof,” he responded wryly. “It was a matter of self-preservation.”

Something slotted into place. “Jaime!” Belle exclaimed.

“Hmm?” He had pins in his mouth.

“I thought Morraine did her hair, that night we went to the library.”

He laughed. “Jaime wouldn’t let Morrie do it.”

~

The restaurant had hamburgers. Really enormous hamburgers.

Belle still had no idea what a ‘monmouth’ was, until they arrived. It turned out to be a theatre.

A small one, Rumplestiltskin said.

“The town’s library has a poor selection... and this is a small theatre. Rumple, there must be two hundred people in here!”

The exterior was suggestive of a castle. The interior….

Belle tried not to gape.

“Buildings like these are common here.”

“You’re enjoying watching me flounder,” she accused him.

“Never that,” he assured her.

But that evening, he watched her more than the players on the stage.

~

Before they retired that night, Rumplestiltskin presented her with a heavy package wrapped in paper, false flowers tucked into the knotted yarn. She had to look closely to determine if they were indeed false and not the real thing.

“Edelweiss!” she said, recognising them from the screenplay they’d watched together.

He smiled, pleased that she remembered.

She would have admired them longer, but she could feel the distinctive shape of books under the paper.

Paper was cheap here, she’d learned. Still, she couldn’t overcome the compulsion to unwrap it carefully, tuck it away for later use.

There was a page in one of the books marked with a crystal-clear envelope containing sprays of silvery dried flowers. She handled this delicately and didn’t open it; they were real.

The facing page was gloriously illustrated, the opposite containing information about the flower and what it meant to the people who lived where it grew.

The first paragraph caught her eye. “Deep love and devotion?”

He froze as though caught in some terrible act, then softly, “I’m afraid I didn’t climb the highest mountains for them, but I will admit that asking you was one of the most frightening experiences of my life.”

“You gave me books.”

“Do you like them?” he asked uncertainly.

Silly man. She kissed him.

~


	12. Chapter 12

Few stirred in the town early on a Sunday morning. Rumplestiltskin flipped off the lights and locked the back door of his shop, pleased with the morning’s work.

Belle’s gift lay in a velvet-lined box under his arm. It had a hollow core, not for economic reasons, but because silver was so much more dense than other metals.

Not as heavy as gold would have been.

He shook his head at himself. Gold indeed! It would have been heavy as a gallon of milk. He could think of some ways that might not be so bad, but not for Belle.

He would need to order more silver to restock. Not until after the others returned, though. If the shop were not open, any deliveries would have to be sent to their home.

Belle would not be happy with that.

~

He removed the holster and his clothing once he’d got in the door, carrying it along with the box to their bedroom.

He’d got back in time. Belle was just waking, stretching slowly in their bed. She smiled at him.

Perhaps he’d done something right. He was hers.

He kissed her. She hummed in pleasure.

“Mine,” she said.

She did things to him that were beyond reasoning.

She drew him down to her, pulled him under the covers.

“Wait for me,” she ordered, and left him.

He could hear her in the bathroom, although not much. The walls in the house muffled sound well, not that he was going to tell her.

It was cold outside; he sought out her warm spot, the smell of her on her pillow.

He had to check his work again, make sure it was perfect. She didn’t know he’d finished it yet; he could still fix things if he needed to.

He hid the box under the covers and inspected the surfaces of the metal for rough spots, reassuring himself with his fingers in the dimness.

The door opened. _Clunk_ , back in the box her gift went. He snapped the lid shut.

She paused at the sound, then slid in behind him, propped herself on an elbow and kissed his cheek.

“You took my spot.” She tucked his hair behind his ear. He thought maybe she liked the grey, from the way her eyes travelled down the streak there. He didn’t know why.

“I kept it warm for you,” he said, unrepentant. He didn’t move.

She smiled, affectionate and fond. “You took my pillow, too.”

His eyes darted away. “It smells good.”

She laughed. She held his chin and kissed him, bore down on him and ravaged his mouth at her leisure.

His fingers clutched the box. It was for later. He couldn’t keep up with her, although at the moment he felt as though he could continue forever.

She knew his tells without having to look. She swung her leg over him and lowered herself onto him, her hands returning to his head to hold him with outspread fingers.

From above she watched him, watched his eyes fly wide and his mouth fall loose, as though the mere physical sensation weren’t enough for her. She wanted to watch _him_.

Her hands were firm about his head, the box exposed between them.

Not now. He shoved it under the pillow.

Her eyes followed it, snapped back to his, intent on his face.

Deliberately, she clenched down on him, and rocked.

“You’re still not allowed to come outside of me.”

He groaned, arched his back, and bucked up into her.

“Did you think you could make a substitute?” she demanded. She could be cruel when it suited her, it turned out. She learned these things, for him.

He whined, bucked. Her hips rolled. Her pelvis ground into his.

Her hands tightened in his hair. His mouth slack, she kissed him, devoured the tremble as he tried to contain his eagerness.

“Belle...” he begged her, muffled by her tongue invading his mouth. He felt her smile.

She pulled back to look at him, to watch him. “I love you,” she said softly.

The shock rolled through him. He wasn’t ready, he was afraid, it was too soon.

She followed him, and shuddered against him.

Her hands were tangled in his sweaty hair. Daylight crept in through the windows, drifting with the sway of the trees outside.

She held his head as though he would bolt from her. Perhaps she was wiser than he.

“Why me?” he asked.

She nipped his chin, hard. “Why not you?”

There were a thousand reasons, but she was incapable of seeing even one of them.

She’d made it safe for him. Nevertheless, the words lumped in his throat and lingered.

Her hands were gentle on him; her thumbs stroked where his hair was lightest in colour.

She deserved to hear it. She deserved better than him. She’d chosen him. He’d claimed her as his.

He was hers.

“Yes, I love you,” he whispered. “How could I not?”

~

They made breakfast together and ate it before the fire, snuggled into blankets.

It had been an omelette, before it fell apart.

He scooped bits of egg and cheese in his hand and offered it to her, the bowl resting on his bare leg.

Belle kept the blankets from falling away. The temperature outside had dropped overnight.

Rumplestiltskin held the blankets in turn, licked the butter from her fingers, watched her pupils dilate, her breathing hitch.

A strip of soft egg twirled around her finger next; she fed it to him. He teased the morsel from her hand, swallowed. She lingered over his mouth, explored the shape of it, found the tiny cut in the hollow under his chin, the price of his haste in the wee hours before dawn.

Her frown made his stomach knot. Her lips soothed the instinctive fear, brushed softly over his skin.

~

Belle wanted to read her books. Rumplestiltskin hadn’t been able to decide which were best, so he’d got her several. Some possessed sharp photography on fine paper, others were illustrated in delicate color.

No, she said, the other land had never achieved printing like this.

She asked him to sit at his wheel with her again. They moved it closer to the fire.

She put her shoulder to the side of his bench and leant against him. Her arm wrapped around his calf, her hand around his foot.

She looked up at him when he jumped.

He shook his head and touched her cheek. His body had forgotten, in the time between.

She opened the first of her books, and he draped her hair over his thigh. It was slippery for her to lean against; it laid like silk upon him.

She turned a page, and he paused the wheel, his hand falling to her hair. Thick and soft, he learned its texture, the way it rolled between his fingers.

When he saw her hand move, he stifled the twitch, then restarted the wheel.

She showed him things she found in her books, and exclaimed over them.

He liked that she was pleased.

~

Belle’s curiosity could put a cat’s to shame. He hadn’t meant to make her wait.

He retrieved the box from under the pillow, polished away his fingerprints with the sheet.

When he came back, she had found the dictionary that was kept on a shelf by the board games. She startled guiltily when he caught her.

“I have no doubt that you will beat me,” he teased her. “Surely you don’t need that?”

“I’d hardly like to play at a disadvantage, sir.”

“Never that.”

“I’d like a rematch,” she said primly.

He grinned, kissed her. “It would be my honor.” He would enjoy it.

He’d flustered her.

He stepped back in a formal bow and held up the box, one eyebrow raised. “If you’ll have it.”

She dropped a graceful curtsey in return, despite her lack of skirts.

He’d never seen anything so lovely.

She shook her head in bemusement. “You really did, didn’t you?” She opened the box.

“Rumple, this is....”

He’d left her speechless. She held the silver phallus in her delicate hand, turned it and examined it. “It’s exquisite.”

“You like it, then?”

Exasperated, she kissed him. She tugged him toward their bedroom. “Show me?”

~

“I’d nearly forgotten what silver was worth,” Belle mused later, turning her gift over in her hands.

He’d washed it for her, then brought it back.

“What do you mean?”

“No one had anything for extras. Jewellry?” She shook her head. “You can’t eat it; it wasn’t even tradable by the time Morraine found me.”

“It wasn’t worth anything at all?”

“Not a bit.”

~

They played the word game in bed, placed the board on a trunk set at the foot.

“I’m not supposed to be able to see your letters,” Rumplestiltskin pointed out. He lay on his front next to Belle, his chin resting on the rail that formed the footboard of the frame.

Her feet waved in the air. “I can see yours, so we’re even.”

“Hardly.”

She was lovely, lovelier still when she trounced his best efforts. In his defence, he was thoroughly distracted.

He traced a finger down the ridge of her shoulderblade. “I’m going to miss seeing so much of you when the others come back.”

It took her a moment--they’d become so used to going without clothing when they were at home. He still didn’t understand what attraction she saw in him, to want to see him bare every waking hour.

That she saw _something_ had never been in question.

She turned his head and kissed him, her palm cupping his cheek.

“You’ll see lots of me,” she said. “They’ll expect us to spend time behind closed doors.”

He rolled her under him and delved into her mouth. Her hair came too close to their letters. He tucked it away.

“My son will suffer.” He didn’t sound at all sorry, even to his own ears.

She shrugged. “Perils of living with extended family.”

Her curious fingers found his nipples. His hips jerked.

He would come too soon if she continued with that. His hands closed around her wrists, pinning them lightly by her shoulders. He would release her in an instant if she displayed a hint of displeasure.

She watched him, speculatively.

Yes, he desired this in their bed. He kissed her, his cock hardening against her hip, begged her without words to understand, then twined his fingers with hers.

Yes. She squeezed his hands, her blue eyes searching his. He dropped his head into the curve of her neck.

She was sunlight, and she burned him. He craved her.

He wanted more, and more of what she’d done to him at his wheel, when he’d found himself safe in her care.

She pulled him down to her, held him tight against her. “Did you bring me anything to work with, or shall I be cutting more of your yarn?”

He had. It was under the bed. He retrieved it for her, and laid it in her hands.

“It’s dirty,” he said apologetically. “We used it for moving furniture. I can get you something nicer, later.”

She shook her head, sat up and kissed him, thick coils of dingy nylon rope spilling from her lap. “Did you have something in mind?”

It was all right, then. It was more than enough that she was willing to forgive his oddities when she encountered them.

In truth, he had many things in mind. Perhaps someday he would be able to tell her.

“I found a book at the library for you, if you’d like, later.”

Intrigued, she asked, “The library has books on bedroom games?”

“No! Not this one, at any rate. It was the book about knots.”

She looked at the rope in her lap. “Oh yes, that would be helpful.” She held up an end. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

He wanted to offer his wrists to her outright, but he was still afraid. Without his conscious permission, his hand had started that fibre-drawing motion he found comforting when uncertain.

She smiled then, took that hand in hers and brought it up to her mouth. Her lips against his pulse-point, his breath quickened. With the other she repeated the motion, her mouth to his fluttering pulse, and laid his wrists together.

She worked slowly, her eyes flicking up to watch him, wrapped his wrists in soft rope and paused to check the tension.

The bedframe was an antique cannonball from the eighteen-hundreds, the headboard one solid piece mounted between posts. She eyed it, then the turned-wood footboard they’d been leaning on.

“The rail?” she asked him.

He was safe. “As my lady wishes.”

He followed her to the pillow she placed there for him, let her raise his bound hands above his head and stole kisses along the way.

She straddled him, tied him with slip-knots to the rail as one would a horse.

He tested it.

“Good?” she asked him. She caressed his arms, his hands, checked her work.

It was very good. “Thank you, Belle.”

His elbows framed his face. She stroked the underside of his arms, the altered shape of his shoulders.

She hadn’t forgotten his nipples, nor the sounds he made when she touched them. She watched him as she did, the way he panted, his hips rocking, his cock hard against her arse.

She bent her head to one, and licked it.

His fingers spasmed; his hips jerked. “Belle!” His voice sounded strangled.

She looked up at him in concern. “All right?”

More than all right, but--“I won’t be able to last, if you do that.”

Her gaze fastened to his, she drew it into her mouth.

A high, keening whine escaped him. “Belle, please!” he begged. “You said I wasn’t to come outside of you.”

She released his nipple and tilted her head. He had the sudden thought that this morning might seem an eternity away to her.

“You can?” she asked. “Without any contact there?”

What was he to say to that? “Nngh.” His cock slid in the cleft of her arse.

“Some contact, then,” she amended. “We’re going to have to make an exception to my rule. I want to see this.”

He moaned.

~

They’d upset the game board at some point, neither of them knew how.

She wanted the book he’d got for her, and paged through it over dinner, then at his wheel, his foot in her lap.

She fiddled with a bit of his yarn on occasion, colourful scraps in bright patterns.

She left at one point, and when she returned, she slipped her feet around the front leg of his bench, careful not to jostle him, and settled there cross-legged, his toes under her.

He froze, the fleece in his hand forgotten.

“Belle,” he whispered.

Her hand rubbed over his calf. “It doesn’t hurt?” she asked.

She’d taken the ugliest part of him and pressed it to her most intimate place, and all she wanted to know was if it hurt. A tiny, hysterical part of him wanted to laugh. He shook his head, touched her cheek with fingers that trembled. He didn’t dare move his foot.

She smiled. “Good then,” and opened her book.

It was a long time before he could start the wheel.

She waited him out, tying and untying and retying knots.

Slowly, with a creak that meant the parts soon needed care, he pushed the treadle opposite.

It wasn’t long before he needed another bobbin, the first one full. His foot would move if he were to lean over.

He left enough for a leader and broke the strand, then removed the full bobbin.

Daringly, he wiggled his toes, just a bit. She looked up, saw the spool that he held uncertainly, and smiled. Her hand caressed his calf.

Her mouth was welcoming when he kissed her, his thumb on her lower lip.

“Why me?” he asked her.

“Why not you?” The words were distorted. Her tongue snaked out to lick his thumb.

Then she pulled back, her nose scrunching. “Rumple!”

He couldn’t help it; he snorted. His skin probably tasted of lanolin. His wife looked as though she’d bitten into a lemon.

Everything, and she hadn’t rejected him. He tossed the spool into his basket and kissed the flavour from her mouth. One became used to the smell, even the taste of sheep’s wool. It got into everything; he hardly noticed it anymore.

Her tongue stroked over his; he swallowed down what she found objectionable, her skull cradled in his hands.

He felt her grow wet over his foot. His ruined foot.

She had been making a point. Experimentally, he slid it further under her. Her hips rocked, but didn’t grind mindlessly into the stimulus presented. That would have hurt, and she was careful with him.

He reached down, sought out her swollen folds.

She jerked when he touched her, her mouth going slack under his.

His other hand moved to her lower back. His fingers in her crooked under bone, lifted her onto her knees, her feet untangling hastily from the bench.

Her head fell back.

There was the sound he wanted.

~

She hadn’t allowed him to wash, after, but drew him to their bedroom and positioned him kneeling in the middle of their bed, where she bound his hands palm-to-palm behind him, then from wrists to elbows.

“I saw someone do this once, back in the other land,” she said as she worked. He could smell her on him, sticky and slick between his fingers.

“The man in question had been caught in our village.”

The pose she mandated drew his shoulders back, his spine going poker-straight to accommodate them, his chest pushed forward on display.

This was something her village did to thieves? She saw his tremble and soothed him, massaged the stretched muscles. “Things had got bad by then, and they wanted to be sure he did not escape. It would have been disastrous.”

She rubbed the bunched flesh between his shoulders where his body strained, checking, always checking.

“I won’t cramp,” he assured her.

She twined her fingers with his damp ones, rose up to comb his hair aside and kiss the nape of his neck. “I must be certain.”

She did, and he loved her for that.

“His village had one of our people prisoner,” she continued, “and we needed him in order to make an exchange.”

The man was a valued member of his village, then. No one would have traded for one such as he.

She fed her smeared fingers to him; he sucked her juices from her skin.

“I was engaged,” she told him, exploring his mouth.

She'd chosen him over any other.

He turned to look at her, but she shook her head. “It was arranged. My fiancé was not always the kindest of men, before he died. He did what he had to.”

She kissed his cheek, turned him back. Higher, she wrapped him then, up past his elbows, around his shoulders and down again before tying the ends to the rail.

His saliva left wet trails where she touched him.

He pulled, dug his knees into the bed and revelled in the security she brought him.

She crawled around to face him, just out of reach of his mouth.

“Did you know your whole torso flushes when you are aroused?” she asked. “It starts here--” she caressed his upper abdomen. He quivered, “--and moves here.” Her palms stroked firmly up, under, over his pectorals, but didn’t so much as brush his nipples.

He groaned. He’d been hard for a long time.

“And here.” She bent his head and nuzzled the back of his neck.

He shivered.

“All down here.” She stroked his sides from above, unhindered by his bound arms.

He whined; she sat up, tilted his head, and kissed him. He saw her shoulder move; she lubricated her hand with her juices.

“Here,” she breathed against his shaking mouth, and reached beneath him.

“Eeh!” he gasped.

She only held him, cock and chin, and watched him pant. Her lips ghosted over his forehead.

“Here,” she murmured.

He tried to thrust into her hand. He couldn’t, not enough.

She was waiting for him.

Here in her hands he felt free to ask, because she could deny him.

“Please, Belle?”

She squeezed him, let go of his chin. That hand went under her, rolled in her folds. “Is this how I get you to ask me for what you want?”

He leaned into her lap and she over, around him, the only sound his sobs and her hands on him.

Her ropes held him safe.

A babbled litany spilled from him, increasingly desperate. “Belle, Belle, Belle, please!”

He felt her smile against his side.

“Come for me, Rumplestiltskin.”

~

In the evening they curled together in their bed, Belle with another book in her hand, this one from their own shelves.

“Read to me?” she requested. “I want to hear you.”

She tucked into him, her cheek on his chest.

The next chapter was hers, she said, when the first came to a close.

He fell asleep to the sound of her voice.

~


	13. Chapter 13

Monday morning dawned cold, the smell of snow in the air. Rumplestiltskin built up the fire in the hearth and wrapped them both in a wide blanket. The ends around Belle’s naked back, he held the corners and kept them from slipping away from her.

That it cradled her to him, her chest to his, only added to the sweetness of the morning.

“They’ll be back all too soon,” she reminded him, her lips at the bridge of his nose. “Is there anything you really want to do before our family descends on us?”

Our family. She said the phrase as though it were made of incense smoke--breathe on it too hard and it would dissipate into dreams.

He considered her. “I do love it when they say ‘anything.’”

She laughed, tilted his head to kiss his nose. “Tell me,” she coaxed him.

He’d spoken too quickly. How could he deny her?

From so close, there was no way for Belle to miss his uncertainty.

“Do I need to tie you up in order to get answers?” she asked him softly.

His heart missed a beat.

“I wouldn’t mind,” he whispered.

Deliberately, she nipped him. He offered his mouth for her kiss. She slanted hers over his, and burrowed closer.

He pulled the edges of the blanket snug around her.

“I think you would,” she threatened mildly, and drew back enough to see him.

He swallowed. “What would you do to me?”

He tried to make it sound teasing, but failed. The words came out in a rasp.

~

She disappeared into their bedroom while he poked up the fire. She had the rope in her arms when she returned, and padded the heavy table with their blanket.

She steadied him as he knelt upon it, his feet hanging over the longer side.

Sitting on his calves as he was, his head was level with her chest. Tantalized, he darted forward to capture her nipple in his mouth.

She squeaked.

He sucked harder, her gasps unstifled, his arms winding about her waist to hold her to him.

Her voice strangled, she warned him that they would never get to anything at this rate.

It was difficult to think so far ahead. He swiped under her breast with the broad flat of his tongue and reluctantly released her, her nipple shining with his saliva.

She left him, and he whined, an eternity until he felt her warmth behind him. His head, nestled between her breasts, leaned gratefully into her.

She kept contact with him after that.

“Do you remember the apron?” she asked him. In front of him, her hands untangled the rope she’d retrieved, finding the ends, then the middle. Its length slithered over his thighs, down from his knees, the excess thumping in rivulets onto the floor.

He nodded, puzzled. The low table was entirely the wrong place for anything similar. Neither of them had forgotten. Neither of them would ever look at an apron in the same way again.

She kissed the top of his head. “The apron was lovely.”

He tilted his head back, hoping for kisses. She obliged him, her mouth sweet on his.

“I’d like to try something, if you wouldn’t mind.” Her hand was gentle upon his cheek. “A bit like the apron, but a few steps further.”

He’d fantasized. Perhaps she had as well. “I am at your disposal, Madam,” he told her with a solemnity that he did not feel.

She smiled, twisted the middle of the rope into a loop while he watched, and draped it over his head.

“All right?” she asked him.

He leaned into her.

She wrapped the lengths of rope back around his ribs, the shape forming an X that framed his pectorals, and draped the long ends between his feet. The ropes dragged over the blanket and slithered to the floor with a soft series of thumps.

Walking in front of him was risky. She trailed her hand along his shoulder and crouched in front of him instead. He knew why; mischief danced under his skin in response to her very proximity.

Wider, she nudged his knees, and rolled down onto hers.

Mischief matched his and met him; she licked the head of his cock, broad swipes of her tongue, just as he’d teased her.

He reached for her, and she pulled away.

“Ach!” she scolded him. Consternation tore at him, his empty hands fidgeted.

She sat up and adjusted the rope. The loop behind his neck slithered down, tickled along his spine. “Hold that,” she ordered.

Glad to have something to cling to, he grasped it with both hands. She pulled it taut. She would know immediately if he were to let go.

“All right?” she asked him.

He kneaded the rope he held, thick as one of her fingers and solid in his hands. “It’s… an anchor,” he said at last, then whispered, “I… I like it.”

She had that speculative look again. She nodded.

The insides of his thighs were sensitive; she scratched him lightly. He shivered at the implicit promise.

She reached under him for the ropes she’d left between his feet, her skin brushing his, his thighs, his hard cock, his tightened balls.

He couldn’t hold back the reflexive jerk of his hips.

Her lower lip between her teeth, she pulled one of the ropes up, watched its corresponding length along his ribs move, and pulled the other.

They wedged between the halves of his arse and up either side of his groin. His hips rolled.

She watched him, laid each rope around the same leg on which side they’d been, inside the crease of thigh and hip, the pattern familiar to him, and pulled again.

He grunted, spread his knees further in response, savoured the snugness of her work, squirmed when his short hairs snagged.

She untangled them and stood.

He wanted kisses, begged for them, his neck arching to reach her, his body carefully still so he didn’t dislodge anything. 

She rewarded him, but then held him at arm’s length, almost as though she were admiring him.

Perplexed, he tilted his head.

“Yes, you,” she answered his unspoken question. “You make a lovely picture.”

She leaned over, kissed him softly. Soft and sweet, and bit him.

He whimpered into her mouth.

“Please, Belle,” he begged her.

She sucked his aching lip, soothed it until the hurt was gone.

Then she circled him, knelt behind him, gathered up the trailing ends and threaded them through the loop of rope he held.

His fingers flexed.

“Let go, please,” she requested.

Reluctantly, he complied, and grasped instead for her hand with both of his. She took his and squeezed them, asked him again,

“All right?”

He tried to peer over his shoulder at her. “I lost my anchor for a moment there.”

She understood that this was important to him. “I’ll give it back, if you like.”

She seemed to think he would crick his neck still, for she turned his head, then moved his hands to her wrist while she pulled the dangling ends taut.

The ropes dug into his shoulders, scraping his skin, the friction deliciously painful. Like he had done to her with the apron days ago, these gripped his arse and spread him.

He tested the ropes, brushed his thumb over her skin. She transferred the pair into the hand he held and laid the other flat against his lower back.

“Back up, please.”

Instinctive fear welled in him. Falling could be very, very, painful.

He hesitated, and she waited.

She would not let him fall. She loved him. Her palm was warm and patient on his back.

Slowly, he began to shuffle backwards, a little at a time. It was as undignified as anything he had ever attempted. The ropes rubbed him with each movement, arse, shoulders, chest, and groin.

He wobbled.

Just when he thought she could no longer hold him, she curled her fingers into his back.

“Enough.” Her lips pressed into his spine above her supporting hand. With a tug in the wrong place she could send him crashing to the floor.

Gradually, his hands on her wrist loosened.

She smiled, the curve of her cheek swelling against him. “Lean forward for me?” Her tone was pleased.

He was happier to do that; his centre of gravity tilted. When he was balanced, his weight off of her palm, she pulled the pair of ropes she held, untangled what had got caught, adjusted what had slipped out of place, and then tightened it again.

He shivered with each touch of her skin on his.

Where his apron ties had left her front exposed, this bent him in half, ropes over his shoulders keeping him from straightening.

‘Undignified’ wasn’t the word for this. Heat from the hearth on his head, drafts of air moved freely down his crack, over his perineum, and on the underside of his balls.

He was safe.

She cupped them from behind, warm, possessive.

She’d left him nearly unable to thrust. His hips rocked, his fingers spasmed in helpless twitches.

The motion loosened the ropes; she squeezed him.

He yelped, froze in place.

“Is it good?” she asked him.

Was what good? He wasn’t sure which she meant. If anything, impossibly, he’d got harder.

“Y--” he couldn’t get out the word. He panted. Pain, arousal, safety, comfort.

She squeezed him again, gentler this time.

He shuddered. “Yes.”

She’d left his arms free so far, now she moved his hands to his elbows and wrapped them in rope, tied them off into the simple network that held him, rose to her feet and walked around the table.

One hand kept contact with him.

He craved her.

On her knees in front of him, she turned his head and kissed him.

His hips rolled; the ropes creaked. He shifted, strained. Her fingers trailed up his side.

“Good?” she pressed him.

He nodded. She found his nipples.

“Belle!”

He had forgotten her initial question, before she found the rope; she hadn’t.

Her hand unmoving on his cock, she asked again.

It formed easily, laughing, on a sob, an abbreviated arch that ended in tension of rope and bone and muscle, a thrust that wouldn’t answer, near-incoherent words that did.

“This,” he cried. Her hand tightened. It was glorious. “Just this, Belle.”

~

With the temperatures outside dropping every day, he knew it would not be much longer until Maine was buried in snow for the winter.

“I’m afraid we do have to get dressed for this,” he told her.

The wind cut right through the skirts Belle favored; the blue jeans came off of their shelf.

She shook the folds out, holding them up dubiously. She hopped when she tried to put them on, stumbled until he caught her.

“It’s so strange to see women in trousers,” she said, drawing them over her hips.

He grinned, admiring her openly. “They do make a lovely view.”

She kissed him. “I like the cream jumper on you best,” she informed him.

They would get nowhere at this rate. Up against the door, he pressed his body into her, chest to knees, her denim-clad calf winding about his leg.

He brushed his nose along her cheek. “As my lady wishes.”

~

They passed an old oak on their way out to the milder trails, a seat worn between its high roots. Years ago, Baelfire had taken a chisel to it and fixed the parts that weren’t perfect.

“There’s often one of us out here, in the summer.”

She eyed it. “On our way back?” A sidelong glance. “I’m sure you can keep me warm enough.”

He kissed her, savoured her.

~

The trails were little more than deer tracks, marked and smoothed over time. Deer were creatures of habit; they grazed where the new growth was most lush, and returned to the same spots, day after day.

“Morrie guards her vegetable garden like a dragon’s hoard,” he said, holding a rustling branch aside for Belle.

“The deer eat her crops?”

They followed a gentle slope down to water. “She builds elaborate fences to keep them out. The first year, they got everything.”

Morraine had been downright murderous.

“The mechanic you met, Harry, he took Bae out here that fall. They brought Morrie the thing’s head.”

“How romantic.”

He grinned. “She likes to cook her venison with tomatoes.”

There was a flash of brown, and a swishing of bushes. It was some time before the sound faded away.

The burbling of the stream remained.

“They didn’t get all of them,” Belle said dryly. The bank was pitted with the marks of cloven hooves.

She started toward the water, and he stopped her.

“You can’t drink that; it will make you sick.” He swung his satchel from his shoulder and dug out a bottle to offer her.

She took it, frowning. “It’s just water.”

“You’d think. No, there’s more tiny beasties here where you cannae see than those you can.”

She cracked the lid, breaking the seal. “Beasts, in the water?”

He laughed. “They’ll nae come up and bite you.”

~

On their return, they rested at the gnarled oak near the path. The high-branching roots made the process of sitting so low to the ground easier for him, and she nestled contentedly against his chest on her side, his coat draped over her to ward off the wind’s chill.

“This _is_ nice,” she told him. “I could stay out here for hours.”

She would get cold soon, now that they were not moving.

Her hair sliding between his fingers, he murmured, “I would gladly stay wherever you were happy.”

She looked up at him, thoughtfully. “You’re not bothered by the cold much, are you?”

He shook his head. “Not much.”

He traced the line of her brow with a finger. “There are other kinds. I thought I’d known cold, before my son and Morrie were taken from me.”

“It’s cold _in_ side,” she said. She took his hand in hers. Her hand lent warmth to his.

“Colder than anything,” he agreed.

Belle burrowed closer, his hand in hers held close to his chest. She buried her fingers in the chunky knit of his jumper, the unbleached cotton twining about her pale skin.

“My mother loved me,” Belle said softly.

Belle was easy to love. He brought her hand up, jumper and all, and kissed her fingers.

She let go of the cotton in favor of his cheek, brushing her knuckles there. “I was a little girl when she died.”

He pressed his cheek into their hands.

“My father was never the same. He spent the rest of his life grieving her.”

She was beginning to shiver.

“We need to go in,” he said. “You need to get warm.”

She giggled wetly, and shivered. “You broke my metaphor.”

“I’ll fix it,” he promised.

~

“I hadn’t eaten grain in forever, when I came here,” Belle said, inexpertly imitating the way he turned the long spaghetti noodles on his fork.

“Why?” he asked. Of all the things to go without, he would have thought grain was lowest on that list. Grain and potatoes.

She eyed the noodles with mistrust. They’d already fallen off a few times.

“We couldn’t farm it.”

Ogres.

“It’s hard to find foods here that _don’t_ contain some form of grain.”

“I missed it,” she said. “There’s so many different kinds here. How is it made? I mean, I know I saw the box, but before that?”

“I’m not sure. Morrie would know.”

The sauce was hers, taken from their freezer. If Rumplestiltskin introduced Belle to the internet now, who knew when she might be able to tear herself away?

“Ah--” He left the table to return with one of their cookbooks, liberally tagged with sticky notes.

Belle’s eyes lit up.

~

Tuesday found them back at the library. They’d curtailed their investigation on Saturday.

That wouldn’t do at all.

Before they left home, Belle methodically ensured that she would be able to read in peace. It seemed that she took great offence at the interruption of her library time, never mind that she’d been the perpetrator.

‘Relaxed and content,’ she’d called him, but not enough.

“I found something!” she exclaimed, only a short time after they’d arrived. “It’s for climbing mountains.”

He peered at the book she held. Detailed instructions were laid out on the page.

She glanced at him, her eyes sparkling. “It says it’s comfortable.”

He could lose himself in her. He kissed her cheek. “Only one way to find out.”

She turned a page and squirmed. There was more.

“We’re going to have to cut this short again, aren’t we?” he asked.

Women were able to be so much more discreet than men. If not for his coat, he’d be lucky to make it out of the building without someone noticing his state.

Her nose grazed his ear. “Meet me in the car?”

~

She’d been worried, she said. She didn’t know if her ropes would hurt him. Now she had a place to start. He would tell her, if she caused him discomfort?

Yes. He was safe.

She stripped him of his clothing the moment they were in the door, shed hers, and guided him to lean against one of the thick posts supporting the timber-frame rafters.

“Yes?”

“Yes.” He kissed her, the post at his back, cool wood between his shoulders, not his front. The post was smooth, not rough-hewn, no coarse hemp about his wrists. She held him, skin-to-skin, the quiet so deep he could hear the furnace vents.

“Meet me back here, ten minutes?”

Ten minutes was an eternity, but as they were merely human, some things could not go ignored. He was there before she was, and chose to kneel in front of the post to wait for her. it was far from comfortable, but he wanted to.

A creak of floorboards forewarned him; he looked up, watching for her.

For this.

She paused in the doorway. Blue eyes widened. She swallowed, walked forward, their rope falling forgotten to the floor.

He turned his face up to see her. Her hand touched his cheek.

“Mine,” she said.

Gooseflesh rose over his arms. She was so very beautiful.

He couldn’t speak; he nodded. He’d been afraid before. This time, he offered her his wrists.

She went as still as he.

For a moment, he thought she would refuse him.

She took them slowly. Her eyes flicking to his, she pressed them together. Down again, she circled them with her smaller fingers. Back, inquiring.

He shivered.

“Mine,” she repeated, softly.

“All of me,” was his whispered reply.

~

She gathered his stained rope and her book, some bottles of water, several of the smaller throw blankets and a pair of scissors, and laid them on the floor by his knee.

Up, she requested of him, his feet laying to either side of the post, his back to its cool wood. The floor was hard under his knees; she saw him shift, his kneecaps taking the brunt of his weight.

She bent and kissed him, her breasts hanging full and ripe, and left him. He heard the sound of a drawer, and she was back, wedging sets of potholders under him.

He faltered at this, bewildered by her. She saw him, caught him. She knelt in front of him, held his face in her hands.

“I love you, Rumplestiltskin.”

He could not look away from her, didn’t want to.

She kissed him, gently.

Ever, for the rest of his life.

She folded his arms behind him, palms to forearms, and bid him stay. The position pushed him away from the post, his body higher.

He thought perhaps she liked it, from the way she leaned back to see him, her head tilting.

She claimed his mouth, firm, invading, demanding. “Mine.”

He hadn’t thought he could get hard again so soon. The rise was slower now; before long they would be able to time his body’s recovery to the minute.

Her book open on the floor, Belle consulted its pictures until she was satisfied with her work. Every brush of her skin on his tantalized him. Once, she had to undo a section and backtrack. She wasn’t following the diagram exactly; her book meant for its instructions to be used to keep someone from falling off the side of a mountain.

It certainly never meant for that particular pattern over his chest, arranged just so, nor the one that pinned his folded ams to his torso and brought a pleased smile to Belle’s face.

He watched every pass of the ropes, fascinated by her. To be the focus of her attention was to be in the centre of a tropical storm, everything else in the universe shut out but for the two of them, as if it had never mattered.

There could be mad, whirling chaos outside, but not here.

She stood, tugged, tested. When she stepped close, he bent his head to press into her, her work both holding and freeing him.

“Thank you,” he told her.

She petted his hair. His cock warred with his mind; he did not want this to end. He wanted it to end; he would go mad if it did not.

He was safe.

Her fingers tucked his hair behind his ears, the pads exploring the cartilage, the shell, down his neck.

Belle’s mind was never still; she wanted to know everything, even when the subject under her scrutiny was him. Every part of him.

“I’m not done,” she said, when he stirred. “I need to throw these--” she tugged the two ends trailing from a network at his shoulders “--over the beam above us. Will you be all right while I do that?”

He had to be. She’d been so careful to keep contact with him. He needed her, his cock hard and weeping.

She stepped back, and he could not stop the whimper that rose in him. Her eyes raked him, his disheveled hair, his protruding chest, thick rope which framed his body for her and bent it to her will, his erect, purpling cock, the muscles in his thighs trembling with his arousal. 

He needed her, and she was too far away.

“Please, Belle.”

She shook herself, balled the ends of the ropes and tossed them over the rafter. It took a few tries, but then she had them, had him, secure. One side, and then the other, her skin in contact with his once more.

His breath ran short at the mere touch of her on him.

She smiled at him. “Go ahead, lean into it.”

He hesitated. She kissed him, touched his inner thigh. Outward, he let it slide, first the damaged right, then the rest of his weight from the left.

Her ropes caught him, held him. She checked the padding under his knees.

“Is it comfortable?” she asked.

He was so hard that it hurt, had hurt for some time. Instead of answering her, his hips shifted. He had no idea how long it had been. Time had slipped away from them.

“Not that,” she said fondly, but she took him in hand, watched him keen and writhe and beg her permission to--

She straddled him, warm Belle surrounding him, swift mercy, her mouth on his,

\--come--

drinking in his cries.

~

She stayed with him, on him. Her hands roamed his shoulders, fingers slipping under rope, tugging; down his body, testing; the supporting ropes under him, around him, holding him.

Safe.

Always, she had untied him, after, but--

“I want to stay, like this,” he confessed.

When he could speak.

Her kiss was soft, her mouth curving in a smile against him.

“Did you mean the rope, or me?”

Oh.

“The rope. You--”

He was safe.

“I want you--” he dove in, curled his tongue with hers, “--on my face.”

She spasmed. Oversensitive still, he gasped, arched. His come dripping down her legs, she left him, rolled her blanket behind his neck and adjusted his ropes, one side at a time. Lower, and they held him.

She opened water for him, would go no further until he drank it. He wanted her, wanted her on his tongue, his lips, and chafed at the delay.

When at last she stepped closer, the placement of her feet mindful of his, he strained to reach her, his come smearing over his cheeks, thick with her juices, and down where he could not follow.

She gripped the hanging ropes for balance, ground her pleasure into his mouth until she was sated, leaned on the post above him.

He wanted more, and again; she scraped his come from his face, from her thighs, fed it to him on her fingers.

Then there was no more. She gave him herself until she had none to give, slid down their damp bodies and kissed him, licked the last smears from his skin and rested against him.

~


	14. Chapter 14

He and Belle spent the next morning cleaning. They discovered evidence of their activities in odd corners of the house, and could only hope they’d got it all.

Then they set about making new messes, in their bedroom.

They went out for groceries that afternoon, despite rain that had begun to fall. Seven adults ate a lot of food. Next to the matches, they found bundles of cotton rope.

Belle glanced both ways before adding one to their purchases, then covered it with loaves of bread.

Rumplestiltskin checked the labels, then added another bundle. She covered that one too.

“Wouldn’t want to run out,” he said. An innocent display nearby caught his eye, and he stumbled.

“Rumple?”

He shook his head. He couldn’t tell her about that here, not if he wanted to escape the store with his dignity intact. He knew what those could be used for, in any land.

He glanced at her as they approached the counter. “You’re blushing,” he murmured. It was quite fetching.

However.

She chose to meet him on the other side of the till.

The grocer, Tom, offered his congratulations. They exchanged pleasantries. If he told them where the clothespins were, Rumplestiltskin would lose his poker face.

Belle started giggling the moment they were out the door. Light rain spattered her hair, oddly warm for this time of year. 

Laughter bubbled up in him, catching as candles. She stood on her toes to kiss him.

No, he wasn’t to pull the car up, all they’d bought were the cold items.

“And rope,” he murmured.

Her eyes sparkled.

~

His cell blipped as he shut his car door, the chime he’d set for family. He checked it, and showed it to Belle, the wipers rubbing on the glass.

“That’s at least four hours away,” he said, putting the Cadillac in reverse.

“So they won’t be back for at least that long?”

“If they drive without stopping, which they won’t.”

The look she gave him nearly caused an accident. He should teach her to drive soon, he thought.

~

They managed to get the perishables put away, just barely. Belle’s hand inside his jumper stroked over his abdomen and tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

She pushed him up against the refrigerator, the handle digging into his hip. He grabbed for it, his cane clattering to the floor. This was more stable.

A damp plastic bag peeked around the edge of the metal door; they hadn’t put the food away all that neatly in their haste.

Her fingers twined in his short hairs; her nails scratched his skin. He shuddered, pressed back into her.

The jumper needed to go. She helped him with it, then his shirt, tossing both onto the counter.

On top of the bag containing her rope.

“I want to go back to that tree, in the summer.” She brushed his hair aside to find the base of his neck, nuzzled it with her nose.

He made a questioning sound. Her teeth scraped his shoulder.

“When no one’s about, and to tie you to it for hours.”

She unbuttoned his trousers, slid her hand inside.

“First thing in the morning, and keep you there.” Her hand wrapped around him and held him.

He groaned, thrust into her hand. He wanted that like he wanted her, the two inextricably entwined. His cheek mashed into stainless steel, she kissed the side of his mouth

“Mine,” she said.

He whined, the sound aching through him, thrust.

Her touch on his cock slipped away as if it had never been.

“Belle!”

He felt her smile against his shoulder. She raked her nails up his bared stomach.

“I want to know what it was that caused that mishap in the store,” she said. Her hand splayed over the vulnerable flesh, her thumb stroking him in soothing motions.

He swallowed. “Clothespins.”

Puzzled, she asked, “The wooden clips used for hanging laundry?”

He was in so much trouble. He’d thought he couldn’t get any harder. “Ours have springs.”

She knew when he was being cagey. She turned him to face her, steadied him against the warmed metal. “What else can they be used for, Rumple?”

Many things, good and bad and in-between, the memories not his own reminded him.

But this--

He took her delicate hand in his, kissed it, then pressed her fingers to his chest.

Over his left nipple.

They closed on it, gently.

His breath came in sharply through his nose.

Her other hand crept up his right side, just as gently. She circled that one with the pads of her fingers, stepped closer, and took it between thumb and forefinger, her palm a warm weight on him.

“That feels good to you?” she asked, holding them.

Just holding.

He had the fleeting thought that she could lead him anywhere she liked, this way.

“Not good, exactly.”

She squeezed, watched him gasp, his hips canting into her.

“But you like it.”

How did one answer that? “Belle, please.”

She let him go and retrieved his cane from the floor. “Take me to bed, Rumple.”

~

They kept to their bedroom after that. The tap and spray of rain upon the windows protested exile, the remainder of its deluge muffled by thick walls.

He knew what lay in their bedside table now, had seen her place them there after they’d finished the dishes from supper, coils of new rope white upon the floor.

She was learning him as he learned her, the shape of his limbs, the smallest signs, desires hidden under layers that he dared not breech.

She dared.

He had learned other languages in his quest to reach his son; the fastest by far had always been gained by immersion. 

He learned her as she learned him, the scent of her pleasure, the working of her mind, the sound of her footsteps upon the floorboards of their home.

She loved him.

He knelt on the bed for her, cupped her face and kissed her, her pleased murmur washing through him. Sometimes it was as though all words fell away, she his only expression left to him.

The cotton rope was stiff with starch; she paired the ends and found its middle, laid it across his lap.

She knew his intimate parts without looking now. Her knees on either side of his, she reached for him, weighed him in her hand as she had done on their wedding day, and smiled in satisfaction when she saw no hint of his former uncertainty in him.

That he showed no fear of her rejection--this pleased her?

She kissed him, tucked the rope behind his balls. Up, around his sides she wrapped him, his hands full of her breasts, his thumbs on her nipples disrupting her. She rose up on her knees and bit his collarbone in fond rebuke.

It wasn’t a deterrent.

When she reached behind him to twist the ropes, he looped an arm around her waist and held her to him, unerringly sought out her centre.

The ropes pulled tight, over his shoulders, pressure under him, and then she clutched his head, his mouth eager at her breast.

The ropes fell down between them, draped over him. He paid them no mind, sucked at her and listened to her gasps turn to mewls and squeaks and _there_.

Her walls clenched around his fingers. She came with a cry, swaying on her knees.

He held her until she caught her balance, light, licking kisses between her breasts, spatter of rain upon the windows.

“Rumple!” she scolded him. She pushed back from him, sat upon her heels.

He smirked at her, lifted his damp hand and sucked her juices from it.

Her eyes darkened with fresh lust. She pulled his hand from his mouth and kissed him. “Are you going to let me finish or not?”

“I believe you did finish,” he retorted smugly.

She rolled her eyes. “Are you going to let me finish _this_?” She caught his ropes and tugged them.

Was she unhappy with him?

Quietly, “I would very much like if you would finish this,” he replied.

She tilted her head, and he remembered what had so pleased her earlier. She didn’t want him to fear her rejection. But how was he to do that?

His hand in hers, she raised it to her mouth and cleaned him, his saliva and her juices with her tongue.

The first touch of her turned his muscles to water. She persisted, rose up and kissed him, reassured him. Time. He’d come this far.

She loved him.

He hadn’t ruined as much of her work as he’d thought. A twist over his chest, and she began a series of loops. This way she said, she might be able to unravel them quickly. The drag of cotton was rough where it passed, pulled, rasped, and made him shiver.

She’d left his arms free today, instead encasing his torso in the beginnings of a pattern that twined about him.

On his front she laid him, the thin ropes digging into him, pulling beneath his balls. He squirmed.

She reached between his legs and grasped that first loop, tugged. The slack in the ropes slid over his body, friction burning paths where they rubbed his skin. Tighter, they caught around his shoulders; she adjusted those and pulled again.

Bright pain followed in their wake, flashes of hot fire. He pressed his forearms into the mattress and whined, pushed into it, seeking more.

Her ropes tucked under the loop, out again, widening it, spreading his arse and exposing him to her. Back, they travelled in the network along his sides; up, she tied them off behind him.

Her hand laid on his shoulder, questioning.

“It’s good,” he gasped in reply. “It hurts, heals too fast.”

Her fingers tightened.

“Please, Belle.”

She laid down beside him, grasped the ropes at his shoulders and drew him over her, wrapped her leg around his.

She hadn’t given him an anchor; she was his anchor.

Her lovely rosebud lips kissed him. “Fuck me,” she demanded.

He hadn’t thought she knew that word. Vulgar in her mouth, he chased it, ropes rasping new tracks with each movement, each rolling flex of his hips.

He would never achieve the kind of burn that came from continual friction over abraded skin, nor bruising from prolonged pressure of knots, but this felt good to him.

It was more than he would have dared ask for.

~

They didn’t know when the others would return. She let him keep the ropes, but should he forget and rush out to greet their family, she tied him to the bedpost.

“Here,” she said, showing him the ends. “If you or I pull these, it will all come undone.”

He stretched contentedly, tug and burn and tension, and nestled into her. “You did this, for me?”

Her caress rippled over bumps and ridges. “Someday, perhaps I will leave it on you, all day.” She made a face, finding a section too snug for her liking. “A little looser, I think.”

“I like it,” he said sleepily.

~

When the others got back, sometime in the night, Belle released him. He went out to say hello, then retreated to their bedroom.

They’d been cooking simple meals for two all week; the pile of food on the counter seemed enormous after so long.

He was placing trays of rashers in the oven when Morraine entered. She buckled Evan into a booster seat at the table.

“Morning, Papa.” She kissed his cheek, started coffee.

“Where’s Bae?” he asked, cracking eggs into a bowl.

“Out cold. He was driving, forgot to wake me up when it was my turn.”

“Forgot, did he?”

“Good luck getting him to tell you otherwise.” She yawned.

The stairs creaked. “Did the others stay over?”

“And miss teasing you? They’re upstairs.”

Michael bumped into the doorframe on his way in from the hall. “John just doesn’t want to cook for himself,” he mumbled. “Ooh, coffee.”

Eggs sizzled and spat on the stove. Rumplestiltskin turned the flame down. “You’d be stuck with naught but powdered creamer.”

“Nasty,” Michael agreed. Baking pans rattled as Morraine set them on the table. She handed him the bread. “Sure, give me the safe job,” he groused.

“Sit down, Michael,” Rumplestiltskin told him. The coffee was still dripping. He passed his spatula off to Morraine.

~

Their bedroom was dark and quiet. Belle stirred when he kissed her.

“You smell like bacon,” she said thickly.

He ducked under the covers. Belle tugged them up, around his back.

He breathed warm air over her centre. She moaned, the sound freer with her grogginess. Her legs fell open for him.

She squealed when he licked her.

He paused, looked up at her.

She whipped back the sheet to see him.

“The hordes have returned,” he told her smugly.

Her chest heaved, nipples dark and perked in the dimness. “You set me up!”

He parted her curls for better access. “Oh no, I do love to hear you.” He sucked her clitoris into his mouth.

Her gasp was high and breathless. This wouldn’t do at all. “Do you have your gift in that drawer?” he asked.

She nodded, suspicious and wary, but pulled away to retrieve its box and open the top. Gleaming silver upon velvet, it lay.

He crawled up her body and kissed her. Her hips rolled under him. He palmed the length of silver and traced her lower lip with its tip.

She licked it, broad and long, curled her tongue around the head. He could come just like this.

Slowly, he pushed it into her mouth. Her eyes widened.

“All right?” he asked her softly.

She cupped him, squeezed.

Silver disappeared between her lips. She swallowed. It was no larger than himself; he didn’t want to have to compete with a toy.

“It can bear teeth,” he murmured. “Though it would not be good for yours.” His thumb scraped her upper canine.

In until it bumped her soft palette. “As far as you like,” he said. “If it works, you will make no noise, or--nothing loud enough to travel beyond these walls.”

Her hand came up to hold it. Her back arched. _Get on with it_.

He kissed her cheek where it wrapped around silver, and obeyed.

~

The eggs would have been cold by the time they emerged, but there were two plates warming in the oven.

No one else was in sight.

~

Normal life resumed, even after marriage. Belle set about learning all that she could of this new land, from the moment the library opened until Rumplestiltskin closed his shop and came for her. 

They picked up Ian from school and went out for lunch.

“Tho… can I call you ‘Grammie’ now?” Ian asked. He’d lost another tooth.

Belle laughed. “You can call me whatever you like.”

Ian grinned, his gap-toothed smile smug. Belle looked between the two of them as though cataloguing their similarities and storing them away.

Rumplestiltskin found her again just as the library closed. “I’ve missed you,” she told him, waving to Mrs. Kirk. “I haven’t been so long without you in--”

“A week?”

“A lifetime ago,” she said, all seriousness. “I missed my husband.”

Her mouth was hungry under his. She shivered as the wind tore around the corner of the building.

“How do people do it?” she asked, taking his arm to walk toward his car. “Live their entire lives separated for so long every day?”

They picked their way around puddles, the pavement still wet from the rain.

“Not everyone is so fortunate as you and I. Even the best matches must have space for their own thoughts.”

She hummed in agreement. “I made much more progress with my books without you there.”

“Did you now?”

“You have a terrible effect upon my concentration.”

“My deepest apologies, Madam. However might I make it up to you?”

He knew better than to ask something like that. Her reply made him fumble his keys.

~


	15. Chapter 15

For the first time since the ruin of her town, Belle had a family again.

“So is it a fruit or a vegetable?” she asked.

Four replies, conflicting answers. Rumplestiltskin stayed silent, watched them all with a small smile.

They argued and debated, without conclusion. The cell phones were Not Allowed.

Morraine did indeed cook her venison with tomatoes, a food Belle had never encountered in the other land.

“That’s right!” Morraine recalled. “Tomatoes were a New World crop. That is, new to the settlers from overseas.”

“Like corn,” Rumplestiltskin said, with a sideways glance at Belle.

Jaime giggled. “They thought tomatoes were poisonous.”

“Europe is really most similar tae our land,” Rumplestiltskin said. “Or at least, our part of it. There were toles several hundred years old when we arrived that bore startling similarities to events that occurred within our lifetimes.”

“How does that work?” Belle asked.

Baelfire passed a dish of shelled peas. “We never did figure that one out, only that time runs faster there.”

“Which should mean that our land is older, not younger,” Morraine said.

“It’s enough to make one’s head spin,” Rumplestiltskin complained. “Even were travel through time possible, it would be incredibly dangerous.”

Belle’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. “It’s not possible?”

“Can’t raise the dead, can’t turn back time, and can’t make someone love you,” Baelfire recited.

Magic had rules. This made sense to Belle.

~

They were expected to spend time behind closed doors. The dishes put away, they called an early night and retreated.

“There’s two bathrooms, closets, and a stairwell between the rooms,” Rumplestiltskin admitted, sorting through her hair for its pins.

The pins tickled along her scalp. “The doors are still thin,” she pointed out.

“Aye, they are.” He combed his fingers through her hair. “What shall we do about it?”

~

There was a new sign in the shop's window; Rumplestiltskin had changed the hours. Tuesdays and Thursdays were shorter now, closing well before the time he would have left to pick her up at the library.

He found her standing there looking at it, and fidgeted. She kissed his cheek and went to start tea.

Rumplestiltskin liked his routine, she’d learned. Marriage had disrupted it.

He’d made _her_ his routine. She didn’t know what to do with that.

Boiling water over leaves, and his cane tapped in the doorway. She offered him a watery smile.

He was worried. She sought the comfort of his arms, let him wrap her in them.

Silk today, a deep rose, so thick as to drape upon him in heavy ripples.

“I love you."

He made a noise in the back of his throat, low and contented, and rubbed his cheek in her hair.

~

A man brought a box to the shop. He wanted Rumplestiltskin to sign his name to a paper before handing it over.

A courier? Her husband seemed pleased, breaking the box's seal with a small knife.

He grinned, showed her its contents, a softly clicking pouch of bright metal sized like grains of wheat. “Silver, easier to melt this way.”

Bemused, she laughed. “Did you use up everything you had?”

“Of course not,” he denied, but she didn't believe him. “I couldn't have this delivered any earlier.”

Not to the house, certainly.

~

The cafe where they picked up their lunch was crowded, busy with people. The few seats available were taken, the stream of traffic flowing around the counter with varying degrees of caution.

She saw the skin around his eyes tighten.

“Come here,” she said, under the noise. Her back to his front, she tugged his arms around her, leaned into him.

“Better?”

He nuzzled her temple in reply.

~

The cluttered back room of the shop lay warm and still--despite wind that chased them inside, tugging hair and clothing, and wrestled them for possession of the door.

He unwrapped her scarf for her, calfskin gloves light where they touched her, untangled it from her hair. Static followed its departure, strands spraying after it and clinging to her lips.

She reached up; he caught her hand, barely breathing.

His lips on hers, the thinnest touch. Static danced, floated.

Cool leather, her knit gloves.

Her hair curled, clung to his mouth.

His nose on her cheek, warm-cool-ice. His breath ghosted her chilled skin.

Heavy-lidded, he kissed her, not close enough, his gloves three spots of contact on either side of her jaw. Up on her toes she met him, his flyaway hair sticking to her in wisps.

They would get too warm, very quickly. Audible crackles followed her, his lower lip slipping from her mouth. She worked his buttons from the bottom, her fingers thick and snagging. Regret, and he helped her from her coat, hung it by the door.

The sleeves of his coat pinned his arms; she held it there, bare hands wrapped in its lapels, the crackle-pop of each movement stinging them.

His breathing slowed, evened.

His head bowed; she tilted hers, nipped his chin. Fresh static jumped between them, metallic on her teeth.

The cane hung nearly useless from his hand, swathed in the sleeve of his winter coat. His elbows fit her palms; her forearms locked under his.

The was a battered chair a few paces behind him. One step, his weight on his mangled foot, and a flash of fear.

He wasn't much heavier than she.

Off again. He leaned into her, his arms trapped in his coat.

Murmured assurances. Yes?

His lips in her hair.

Another step then, and the chair at the backs of his knees.

Her lips in his hair, his head in her hands, her kiss hard, aggressive, and demanding.

He whined, opened to her. His coat, wrapped under him, held him. It would come loose, too soon. He sprawled upon it crookedly, one hip tilted, his undamaged foot planted on the floor for balance.

She took the cane from him gently, set it aside. His belt from its loops, then behind him, through the slats, and around his arms above the elbows.

His upper arms restrained in sleek leather, his lower by the tangle of his coat, she explored his shoulders, sought bunched or straining muscles, found none. The silk of his shirt waved and clung in the dry air. He’d gone lax under his clothing, the holster he wore when away from home draped in supple lines over him.

Closer, and his head lolled back, resting warm between her breasts. She could see him from where she stood now, the ridge of his trousers, the cant of his hips, his spreading thighs.

The tie cut into his neck at this angle; he didn't seem to notice. Off, she tugged it, drew out the knot, and left the fine material draped over him.

Her lips on his forehead, and his eyes slid closed. She'd found him patient, even when hard.

His neck in the crook of her arm, she bent around his shoulder. The buttons of his shirt gave way between her fingers, then his waistcoat peeled aside.

She'd forgotten his undershirt; soft cotton impeded her progress.

“Do you have a change of clothing here today?” she asked him.

She knew he had before.

He blinked slowly, and she wondered if he'd heard her.

“Rumple?”

He turned his face to her.

She tipped his chin. Her mouth on his, his instant response.

So it was words that were difficult. 

“Look at me, my love.”

He struggled to focus on her.

“Where did you go, Rumple?”

“Go?”

He sounded puzzled, the word thick on his tongue. She'd seen this in him before, though never this deep.

It was almost as though he were drugged.

The thought alarmed her.

It was the work of a moment to release him, and shuck the coat from his arms. Confused and dismayed, he reached for her.

She knelt and hugged him. He thought himself rejected, and her heart ached for him.

Tremors, but he was back with her. She rocked him, murmured in his ear. Affection and endearments, nonsense and love.

Tremors turned to shivers, and his silk fell wrinkled from her hands.

His lips on her neck.

She pulled away to see him. For the first time since she'd met him, he looked utterly exhausted.

“Why?” he asked her.

She'd hurt him in her fear.

“I didn't know what had happened to you.”

He frowned, perplexed. He hadn't a clue why she'd stopped.

How to explain what had so unnerved her?

“It was odd?” she tried. “Like you'd had too much to drink.”

Or eaten the wrong mushrooms.

He tilted his head. “I can't get drunk.”

She filed that away.

“I was worried,” she confessed.

His nose to hers. “It felt good,” he said. “More than good. Thank you.”

She'd ruined it, whatever it was. “Perhaps next time I shouldn't stop?”

He smiled. “There is very little that can hurt me, dear.”

~

They were out of sorts all afternoon.

In their bedroom that night, Belle discovered another wooden chair, similar to the one in Rumplestiltskin’s shop. Bright blue objects drifted over the bed, egg-shaped and lighter than feathers. They rolled about from the mere disturbance of her approach, but dragged on the blanket as though spotted with tar.

Curious, she picked one up, its slight resistance incongruous with its negligible weight. It was filled with naught but air, and springy to the touch, its texture like the thin, protective gloves he'd given her for the lawnmower. Strands of her hair lifted of their own accord, reached for the smooth, blue surface, and clung to it.

The _snick_ of the door, and she turned.

“They're balloons,” he said, cautious and uncertain.

The tie was gone; his collar lay open, white cotton peeking through. Even the undergarments here were made of finer cloth than she'd ever seen.

“They're wonderful,” she replied.

He ducked his head as he approached.

When he stopped in front of her, both hands rested on his cane. She dug her fingers into the balloon.

She wanted him.

Reserved, he watched her without speaking.

Finally, he bent his head to kiss her.

Just before, she saw mischief crinkle at his eyes.

The shock stung her lips, and his.

“Rumplestiltskin!”

He smiled, framed her face, and claimed her mouth. The cane clattered to the floor.

The balloon between them, she could not press into him. Down onto the bed they tumbled, blue scattering wildly around them. She shoved the obstacle aside and rolled him, laughing, onto his back.

He was beautiful.

She kissed him; his breathy laughter gasped into a moan. It rumbled up into her, warmed her.

Evening stubble scraped her fingers, three points of contact either side of his jaw. His hair sprayed out over the blanket; soft strands stuck to her skin, wisped around his mouth.

Her mouth. They tickled her nose, and his; she cleared them from his eyes.

“Did you want me to pick up where we left off?”

He swallowed. “Y-yes. Please?”

Her nose to his, up between his brows, and her lips on his forehead, where the worry lines creased. His eyes drifted shut.

Was this the beginning of that strange state?

Her hand on his cheek brought him back.

“This afternoon, I asked you if you had a change of clothing in the shop, and you couldn't answer me.”

Ruefully, she hooked a finger in the white cotton at his throat.

“I'd like to do this a little different this time, I think. I'd rather not cut this off of you, if you don't mind.”

He laughed.

~

Upright on the edge of the bed, they made short work of the buttons. His undershirt off and over his head, his hair flew into disarray.

She carded it back, tucked it behind his ears, and kissed him.

Balloons had got trapped at the headboard; they squeaked. His hair curled about her fingers; she buried them in it. It stuck to her wrists, laid like lace over his cheek.

Down, his shoulders firm beneath her hands.

His hands, tucked behind him. He gripped his wrist, sought out her mouth in response. Brief--and sweet. He was descending into something she did not understand.

 _It felt good_ , he'd said. _More than good_.

She'd asked if she should not stop.

She didn't want to rouse him from this.

She did not want to take this from him.

One hand on his abdomen, the other the buckle of his belt, she pulled, let the friction of the leather's passage burn him, felt the muscles of his belly clench with the pain.

He gasped for breath.

He healed, as he'd said, too soon.

The back of his neck--she turned him, pressed him towards the mattress. A tap to his knee, and he twisted for her, his legs sliding out onto the floor, his chest in the blankets.

Hands down his shoulders, over his arms.

“Very good,” she told him, and felt something in his body ease at the praise.

She’d seen this also, before.

Standing, she took up the belt, wrapped it high around his biceps. It pulled his shoulders back; she cinched it, tugged and tested.

His upper arms bound in leather, she moved the chair closer. Slowly, onto his feet. Her shoulder fit under his, her arm around his waist, under the crook of his elbows.

One slow, halting step, the chair at the backs of his knees.

His head in her hands, her mouth on his--a greeting.

She tilted his chin higher; he strained to meet her. Her nose rubbed a path to his brows, the furrow cleft deep between.

Back, until his upper arms pressed flat against the chair, his hands gripping the seat. The position forced him into a slouch, his shoulders pulled back, his hips pushed forward, legs splayed.

Behind him, the buckle of his belt knocking on scarred wood, she threaded it through the slats and refastened it, the soft _thwap_ of leather following the motion.

A short step to the drawer at the side of the bed, her hand in contact with his shoulder. He craned his neck to see her; she showed him the clothespins she’d retrieved, wood and metal on her palm.

His eyes widened, and she leaned in to kiss the corner of his mouth.

“Do you know, I’ve carried a pair of these with me for two days?”

She set them on the bed and circled him. Leather and wood creaked.

Her finger up his straining placket, his hissing indrawn breath. The slide of his zipper seemed loud in the quiet. She pulled him from his trousers by feel, fascinated by the small, helpless whimper her touch evoked.

Lightly, up the veined underside, around the head. He groaned, and his head tipped back, panting.

“I was thinking about this all afternoon.”

Her underwear had got wet; She stripped it off and straddled his lap, her skirt bunching, and kissed him, hands tangling in his hair, her bare feet just touching the floor around the girth of the chair. His cock dark against his belly, she adjusted him so that it lay upright between them, surrounded by ripples of her pale blue skirt, and reached for the clips she’d left on the bed.

She felt his shiver, and petted the underside of his cock, pressed it firmly into his belly, the foreskin sliding silken beneath her touch.

His hips bucked, and she stopped. He whined. Clips in one hand, she reached up to roll his nipple between her fingers.

“I tried one on,” she said, offhandedly. Too long, and her breast ached at the memory.

Stunned, he looked up. Protested, “Belle!”

“Hush,” she said fondly, and set the clip behind his nipple, sideways. He whimpered, and squirmed. She reached for the other, and he flinched.

She froze. “Rumple?”

His eyes watering, he gasped, “Please, Belle. Please yes.”

His mouth was lovely when he was hurting, his tongue pliant and shivering. Experimentally, she touched his clamped nipple, angry red between its wooden jaws.

That squeak hadn’t come from her.

She went slower with the next, watched the keen rise in his throat, the arch and the rapid rise-fall of his chest.

“It hurts,” she said, unbuttoning her blouse and shrugging out of it. The bra went next. Wooden clamps hanging from his chest, she edged forward, her breast offered for his mouth.

Still panting, he latched on to her. Pants turned to gulping sucks, and she pressed into him, her mound finding relief on his sternum.

Her nipple in his mouth, his breathing slowed, and she twined her fingers in his hair.

“Do they go numb?” she asked him, acutely aware that his hard cock lay inches beneath her spread thighs.

His tongue flicked at her, and he nodded.

Her finger to the tip of the second red peak, his rumbling growl.

“Not all the way,” she concluded. “I suppose they’ll hurt when they come off.”

He shivered, sucked harder.

“But not as long as they might.”

Grumbles. He _wanted_ the pain, even in the middle of it.

She had to give up his mouth for his cock; her breast slipped out to fall, wetly, over his chest, the clothespins scraping her on her descent, pulling at him.

In her, the head between her folds. He whined, and she kissed him.

“Don’t move.”

A hiss through his teeth, but he obeyed.

Further--she savoured the stretch, the slow pressure of fullness within her.

He’d closed his eyes as if in pain--and yes, his mouth was lovely. She hummed, pleased with him, and placed her palms over his tormented nipples, rolled the clothespins up, and down.

His breath in sharply through his nose, his high-pitched whine, his pleading, muffled, “ _Belle_.”

“I’m going to take these off of you, Rumple, and I want--” she spread herself wider, and found that she could take him deeper “--to feel you in my throat.”

“Please,” he begged.

His nipples had an odd, flat shape when she freed them. With a wounded cry, he slammed up into her. Her toes left the ground, and the clothespins snapped from her fingers to fly, skittering, across the floor.

Her heart pounding from more than lust, she clapped her hand over his mouth.

He stopped as suddenly as he’d begun, his chest heaving in distress.

She needed more.

“It’s done,” she said, “and I haven’t got enough of you.”

The second thrust was like a bowstring loosed, tension haemorrhaging from them both. He couldn’t use his mangled foot for leverage; leather and wood groaned under the strain.

She ground into him, knew she’d be sore tomorrow, and dragged her thumbs across his reddened nipples.

“Gah!”

~


	16. Chapter 16

The first snow that weekend caught everyone by surprise, temperatures dropping rapidly overnight, the wind shrieking ‘round corners like something possessed. The area bears would surely retreat to their dens now.

Wendy, John, and Michael all arrived well before the roads became impassable. The house full again, weather such as this was now Rumplestiltskin’s favourite time of year.

They woke Sunday morning to find the world thickly blanketed in white. No one would be getting out until the roads were ploughed.

The people of this land named their larger acts of nature, and this one was “Storm Alfred,” according to the radio chattering by the sink.

“The generator kicked in last night,” Baelfire said over an early breakfast. “Power’s out everywhere. Land line’s dead.”

“Lots of trees down,” Michael added around his coffee mug. “Too many leaves, still.”

The television, rarely used, flickered with satellite maps and images of disarray. Muted newscasters narrated, grave-faced, then switched to an ad for potato crisps.

Rumplestiltskin eyed him critically. “How long were you oot there?”

“Only a couple hours, Grandpa,” Michael answered. “The road crews won’t reach us for a good long while. We’ll need groceries soon, if we want anything fresh.”

They heard tires crunching outside, then John stamping snow over the porch. “Stuff’s like cement,” he said, slipping in the door. He shut it against the cold, his glasses immediately fogging, and peeled off his layers.

Baelfire hung John’s coat by the fireplace. “Keys?”

John was nearly blind without his glasses; he left them on and tossed the jingling bunch in the direction of Baelfire’s voice.

Baelfire wrapped up and left.

John shuffled across the floor and slumped into the chair that Rumplestiltskin rattled. He wrinkled his nose at the smell of Michael’s milky coffee.

“That’s disgusting.”

Michael grinned and slurped.

~

The town the next morning was quiet, thick snow muffling the travel of sound and keeping most indoors. He and Belle left Wendy’s SUV beyond a series of ploughed snowpiles and waved to Harry across the street in his shop, heavy glass doors closed against the cold.

They knocked the snow from their boots as they reached the grocery’s overhang. The store was tiny, and they found what they needed without trouble.

“First snow of the season, very early,” the grocer told them, handing over their purchases. “Gonna be a cold one this year. You got all that?”

Nodding, Rumplestiltskin fixed Belle’s hat and opened the door for her. “We’ll get the car and come back for the rest. Thank you, Tom.”

Belle turned to say something to him, backing out of the store. Light on her feet despite her layers, she was five steps away when he saw it.

“Belle.”

There was a bear in the street. It staggered as though disoriented, white foam dripping in ropes from its jaws. It was heading toward Belle.

He hadn’t moved so fast in a hundred years, not in this land. He was between Belle and the bear before he drew breath, groceries forgotten, the sound of gunshots in his ears, the recoil of the Walther bucking against his hands.

Then the _click-click_ of an empty magazine.

The bear swayed and collapsed, six chunks of pulverized metal buried deep in its brain.

Rumplestiltskin’s foot was screaming at him.

His shoulder burned with fire.

He’d lost his cane somewhere along the way. He made it a few painful steps from the beast, then fell to his knees, his empty weapon discarded in the snow--anything to get the pressure off of his abused limb.

“Rumple!”

His head jerked up. “Dinnae touch it!” he rasped. “Yon beast was rabid.”

Harry, coming out of his shop, paled. “Rabid? We’ve got to get ya to th’ hospital!” He dug in his pockets for his keys. My truck is--” 

Rumplestiltskin shook his head, pain making him dizzy.

“What?” Harry asked. “We have to! Mr. Gold, yuh could die.”

“We can’t,” Belle said. She laid her tiny hand on his undamaged shoulder. They weren’t going to get out of here without reassuring the man somehow. Rumplestiltskin turned his head to look up at her; she tilted hers in question.

He nodded, and leaned into her side. For comfort or stability, he wasn’t sure which.

“Harry, come here,” Belle said softly, just loud enough to be heard. “I want you to see something.”

Puzzled, Harry complied, his boots crunching in the snow.

Rumplestiltskin’s hand over his shoulder was warm with his blood. His coat and shirt were torn, the blood seeping from a series of wide, deep gashes. Belle helped him to pull the layers aside, freezing air striking his soaked skin.

Harry’s mouth dropped open. The wounds were surely closing by now, although he’d have a fine set of scars as a souvenir.

The grocer poked his head out the door. “What’s all--” He stepped out. “Is that… a bear? Why didn’t you just run it off?”

Harry looked up. He swallowed.

“Rabies, Tom. I need to get him to th’ hospital, he took a bad fall.” He fetched Rumplestiltskin’s cane and helped him to stand and holster the Walther, hiding the blood from the grocer. “I’ll get you two home,” he said in an undertone.

To Tom he said, “We’ll need tuh post a god. Call the Health Depahtment. Nothin’ must get to tha’, a’ight? No vultures, no wooves, not even eh rat.”

Fortunately, Rumple thought muzzily, he’d killed the bear over pavement. The blood would not seep into the dirt to be consumed by scavengers.

“Ahways knew yah was toughuh than ah mountain lion, Gold. Pitah we can’ eat that bey’ah.” Harry glanced at Belle. “Yuh absolutely shuh it didn’ so much as shpit on yuh?”

Her smile made Rumplestiltskin’s insides warm. “It didn’t even get near me.”

Harry assisted the two into the tiny backseat of his pickup truck, then ran back for their groceries. Tom brought over the ones they’d left inside.

“Hang on, gotta bang a left,” he told them, when he’d started the engine. It roared to life, and soon they were on their way out of the town proper. Short buildings gave way to snow-laden trees, their branches drooping toward the earth.

Rumplestiltskin rested his head against the seat, glad to be away from the scene. He’d never been so terrified in his life.

“Is that why yuh nevah seemed to age?” Harry asked, after a few minutes had gone by. He glanced up into the rearview as he drove slowly, watchful for patches of ice that littered the road.

Rumplestiltskin rolled his head to look at him in the mirror, at last letting go of his shoulder. His hand fell into his lap. “You knew?”

Harry glanced at him. “Not eve’ythin’. Not… that.” He waved a hand in the vague direction of the blood that stained Rumplestiltskin’s coat. They’d peeled the clothing away once they were in the truck. The gashes had begun to feel like an injury days old by now, not a few turns of a sand-glass.

Belle, her arm around Rumplestiltskin’s waist, exchanged a glance with him.

“What did I dae?” he asked. Exhaustion was starting to set in, and he rested against Belle’s side, her breath sweet on his cheek.

Harry shook his head. “I’ve known yuh since I was a keid, Mr. Gold. I can’ be the only one.”

“It’s Rum,” he said sleepily.

“Nuh-uh. You’re Bae’s papa.”

He dozed as they approached the cabin, nestled into Belle, the smell of his own blood strong in the enclosed vehicle. He woke as the truck crunched over the rougher ground of their front drive, and felt Belle brush her lips over the top of his head.

“Am a pure nick,” he complained, as Harry opened the door. He and Belle helped him from the truck’s high cab.

Harry dug around in the front seat, then came up with an old packing blanket to wrap around Rumplestiltskin’s shoulders. “Tuh hide th’ blood from yuh li’tle ones,” he said, and Rumplestiltskin nodded in thanks.

Belle wrapped her arm around his waist and guided him toward the cabin. Harry gathered up their groceries and followed.

Someone inside must have heard the truck pulling up, for Baelfire met him at the door.

“Papa? I thought you’d gone out for groceries. Hey Harry, come on in!” Baelfire exclaimed, pulling the door wider.

He closed it after they’d entered, looking askance at the grease-stained blanket and the metallic tinge of iron in the air. “Papa?” he asked in a worried tone.

Rumplestiltskin, the blanket wrapped over the hand holding his cane, moved it aside to reveal a little of the blood, darting a glance in search of Ian and Jaime. Jaime, seated beside Morraine at the loom, looked up and waved, her attention then drawn back to her lesson. Fortunately, Ian was nowhere to be seen.

Baelfire’s eyes widened. He shook his head. “Ian is in the other room. I’ll put the groceries away. Thanks, Harry.”

“Hullo, Harry. We’ve almost got lunch ready,” Michael said, coming up behind them.

Belle and Rumplestiltskin made their escape for the bathroom. He was hungry and tired; all he wanted to do was lie down and rest, or maybe eat a whole bear. He stank.

Belle helped him with the holster, then stripped off his ruined coat and shirt, bundling the fabric up with the blanket and stashing everything on the counter. She removed her own coat and set it beside the bundle.

One small hand flat on his abdomen, the other on his good shoulder, she pushed him up against the cool tiled wall to examine him critically, noting the progress of his wounds to thick, angry marks which slashed across his shoulder.

“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. Tired as he was, his trousers began to tighten the longer her skin touched his. His hips jutted out obscenely, a metal handhold meant for balance pressing under his rear.

She nodded, and kissed him softly. She bit his lip. “Turn around,” she said.

He obeyed, and leaned into the wall, savouring the pressure of that same metal bar. She gathered up his hair and pulled his head aside, trailing her fingers over the fresh scars.

“You saved me,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes. “I think I saved us both.”

She rested her cheek on his bloodied shoulder and kissed his neck.

He shuddered.

“How’s that?” she asked.

“I was known as a coward, Belle. I didn’t think I was capable of something like that.”

“I’m quite sure you didn’t even hesitate, Rumple.”

“I was terrified--for you.”

“Rumplestiltskin.” His full name made him open his eyes. With his temple pressed against the tile, he met her compassionate blue gaze over his shoulder. “Courage does not mean not being afraid, my love,” she said clearly, and something within him broke. “It means doing the brave thing despite the fear.”

He swallowed, tremors beginning to ripple through him. Belle turned him and wrapped him in her arms, his chilled skin against her smudged blouse.

He wept like a child, a lifetime of shame bubbling to the surface. She held him through it, her short nails scratching over his bare back in gentle patterns. Her other hand crept up over his shoulder; her fingers spread to fit between the marks of the bear’s claws.

She let him cry, and when it had passed, the rise and fall of their slow breaths in perfect rhythm, she leaned back and kissed him. 

Her mouth tasted like tears. He opened his eyes in surprise. Tear tracks ran down her lovely skin. He lifted one hand to touch them.

“Why?” he asked.

“I don’t like seeing you unhappy.”

“Me?”

“You, goose.”

He ran his lips over her eyelids, delicately licked the tears that dampened her cheeks, followed the tracks to her mouth and framed her face with his hands.

“I never would have met you, if I hadn’t come here. No Dark One has ever lived more than a few decades after assuming the power.”

“None?”

“I have a lot of their memories.” He searched her eyes, afraid that _this_ would be the piece of his story that drove her away. Every time it happened, the fear returned, but every time it was less. Maybe someday it would disappear entirely.

She sighed, “Perhaps something good came out of all of that.”

Every time, she surprised him.

Maybe someday he would be able to tell her the whole sorry tale.

“My family is the best thing to come out of anything,” he told her. “You are my family.”

“As you are mine,” she said. “I may not have known the others all that long, but Rumple--I can see you, the best parts of you, in every one of them. They are… amazing men and women because of you.”

Sometimes, when Belle spoke to him thus, it was like looking directly at the sun. It was painful; it hurt, because he felt he didn’t deserve her praise. So he kissed her instead, bloodied fingers snagging in her curls.

She giggled at the feel, his nails scraping gently at her scalp, and nipped at him. Her teeth, white and sharp, sent a frisson of lust straight down his spine.

“Filthy man,” she murmured. “You mind sharing that shower?”

“I thought it was just me showering.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

She reclaimed his mouth, tugging gently at his lower lip with her teeth. He whimpered--a soft, needy thing, his hips tight against hers. He felt her smile.

“Here?” she asked, his cock trapped between them.

He rested his forehead against hers, his nose fitting into the bridge under her delicate eyebrows. He tried to calm himself-- he did.

This close, her eyes were the most amazing blue.

Calm was nowhere to be found. “Please?”

She breathed him in, blood and all, and smiled. “I love you, Rumplestiltskin.”

It was he who turned her against the wall then, the grab bar pressing into her rear. She helped him lower himself to his knees so he didn’t fall, and he pulled off her boots with reverent hands. He had to take a moment to rest the side of his face against her thigh. She carded her fingers through his hair and gave him the time he needed.

He lifted his head to kiss her jeans-clad hip, then over her mound where the curls would nestle. No skirts today, more’s the pity, as thick blue denim guarded her from him. There were advantages to its density, though; he set his teeth into the fabric and bit.

He would remember the sound she made for the rest of his life. She arched up, letting go of his hair to grip the bar behind her rear. Her head fell back, and she gasped for breath.

Then her hands scrabbled at her fly, peeling the waistband of her jeans away with near-feral abandon. Her chest heaved, and she appeared to brace herself as though for some great endeavor. He would have smirked if he could, although he wasn’t sure that she would forgive him in this moment. His trousers strained unbearably. He had no coherent thought to spare for them.

Not until the instant he released her did she push the blue jeans down.

He dove back in, stripping the jeans off even as his mouth sought her centre. Her underwear was spotted with her juices; his male pride glowed in satisfaction at the sight. Despite her assurances, he would never understand why she would accept him, or grant him the privilege of intimacy like this.

She kicked the jeans aside with a hasty snap of her foot. The underwear soon followed, scraping down his nose and flicking at his lips.

“Rumple...” her strangled gasp drew him from her. He looked up in question, his face damp. She seemed to have lost her capacity for speech. So he did the only reasonable thing he could and licked a broad stripe directly up the centre of her exposed sex.

There was another of those delicious sounds, and her hands buried themselves in his hair. “Stop it.”

He laughed into her, his nose sliding past her clitoris, followed by his tongue.

“Now,” she squeaked. She pulled him insistently to his feet. He followed, ducking his head under her glare. She tugged urgently at his trousers. “Off,” she ordered.

He obeyed her with an impish grin. “As my lady wishes.”

Her reply was an impatient growl. She dragged him to her, muffling his whimper with her mouth and wrapping one leg around his hip. She grumbled as he lined them up, her fingers scratching at his scalp. She pulled him closer and nipped at him, licking her fluids from his skin.

She reminded him of nothing so much as a cat. A cat in heat.

He slid into her with a groan. 

She mewled, arched into him, and lifted her other leg to wrap around his waist, resting much of her weight on the bar.

She was exquisite. She pulled him towards her with each thrust, the satin of her blouse soft against his bare skin. She didn’t seem to mind the blood that stained him from shoulder to waist.

She shuddered then, her head falling against the wall. Her legs clutched him in a vice-grip, her inner walls, soft and delicate moments before, clenching fiercely around him. He trembled, and thrust, then set his mouth to her pulse-point as he came.

She held him through it, murmuring soothing nonsense in his ear.

“I’ll never understand you,” he said at last.

She kissed him. “Do I need to show you again?”

~


	17. Chapter 17

Rumplestiltskin might heal, but he’d nearly fallen asleep in the shower with her.

They’d gone out long enough to see Harry off and eat a late lunch, then retreated to their bedroom.

“I always wanted a big family,” she told him later that afternoon, watching him wake.

He smiled to see her, reached up to stroke her damp hair.

“It was just me and my dad, after Mom passed, and half of him went with her.”

Her nipple pebbled under the rasp of his thumb. He drew slow circles around it.

“Ours is an unusual arrangement in this land,” he said, “Not where you and I are from--unless that has changed?”

He was hardening against her hip.

Belle shook her head. “Not even before the ogres destroyed everything.”

He burrowed into her, his nose at her neck, his warm breath eliciting shivers from her.

“Bae has been scandalizing me for years,” Rumplestiltskin informed her, his fingers exploring her shoulderblade. “He thinks he’s discreet.”

Down the length of her spine, each bump and ridge the subject of his attention.

She thought his righteous affront a thin veneer. Her husband kept his family close.

His hair soft on her cheek, she held him, savoured the slow burn which had begun in her, the promise of him in her arms.

She forgot to reply.

~

That evening by unspoken consensus, they all gathered in the main room, a mismatched collection of mugs and teacups scattered over the short table.

Morraine spurned the family’s teapot and steeped handfuls of chamomile, shredded orange peel, and lemongrass in a large pot on the stove.

There were no sweets present; no one felt much like eating.

There were nine of them, and baby Evan. Baelfire sprawled on the floor by Morraine's feet. Rumplestiltskin, who was rarely seen without Evan after their nap, was squeezed into the middle of the settee with the babe in his arms, Belle on one side, little Ian on the other. Wendy curled up with Jaime in Rumplestiltskin’s wingback, her brothers perched on chairs brought from the dining area.

No one thought of excluding the children from their midst. Whatever they all decided tonight would involve them as well. They should know why, Belle thought. Or at least some of it.

His chin on Evan’s head, Rumplestiltskin said, “Before you all returned to me from Neverland, I was in the habit of moving my shop every few years. I was overdue for a move when you came back.”

Baelfire closed his eyes, pressing his cheek into his wife’s knee. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come here, Papa.”

Rumplestiltskin made a face at him. “It seemed a good idea at the time. Perhaps it is time we flit, as I did before. Another town, another country, even.”

Baelfire raised his head and gave his father a hard stare. “What if someone finds out again, someone not so discreet? What then, Papa?”

Belle shivered, and reached for Rumplestiltskin’s hand. Rumplestiltskin swallowed. He clung to her, his grip a little too tight. “I dinnae ken,” he admitted softly.

She flexed her hand, kissed his cheek when he looked at her in apology.

“Why did you leave?” she asked.

Rumpelstiltskin winced, and she immediately regretted the question.

“If you don’t want to say, I--”

“No, it’s all right,” he assured her. “The curse… makes monsters of men, and gives them great power. I hardly recognised myself. Every Dark One who has gone before, I heard them in my head, back in the other land. They were always with me, even when I was with Bae.”

Baelfire sat up. “You never told me that!”

“Why would I?” his father countered. “I thought I was going mad.”

Baelfire frowned, leaning back against Morraine’s leg. “I didn’t know what had become of you.”

“I’m sorry,” Rumplestiltskin whispered. “That was a terrible thing for a child to see.”

“I was fourteen!”

Rumplestiltskin shrugged, releasing Belle’s hand to scratch lightly at the back of Evan’s soft shirt, his fingers moving in soothing circles. “Always a child to me,” he said.

“Hmph.” Baelfire scowled at his father in mock irritation, then sighed. “I asked the Blue fairy for help. She gave us a bean that would take us to this land, where she said there was no magic.”

“Rum was one of the most gentle men I’d ever met,” Morraine told Belle. She ignored Rumplestiltskin’s surprise and carded her fingers through Baelfire’s hair, her eyes going hard as flint. “The others in our village were… they were not kind.”

Belle hoped never to fall afoul of Morraine’s displeasure.

“My family raised sheep. We traded fleece and sold Rum’s work at market. I was a little girl when Milah left them.”

Something cold washing over her, Belle stole a glance at her husband, found his eyes downcast, his gaze fastened on the top of Evan’s head. His thumb swept slowly over the baby’s tiny ear.

“Papa told me that she’d died,” Baelfire said, “but then we ran into her and Jones off the coast of Neverland. They were working for Pan.”

Rumplestiltskin looked up. “I thought she _had_ died.”

“I had two hundred years to get over it, Papa.”

Belle could hear the exasperation in his voice, but still she wondered--was he really as over it as he said? She had no wish to disturb an old wound, so she asked, “How did you escape from Neverland?”

There was silence. “Pan killed Milah,” Wendy said at last. “We had the mermaids’ help, and then Jones and his ship, when he turned on Pan.”

So much for not digging at an old wound. She felt as though she’d just whacked it with a stick.

“We’ve been back fourteen years,” Morraine said, as though to reassure her. She tugged on Baelfire’s hair and stood, moving toward the stove in the kitchen area, followed by her husband. She held a strainer over a heavy glass pitcher while Baelfire poured, filling it slowly with fragrant tea. No words passed between them, each step as choreographed as a dance.

Belle watched them sidelong. She wondered at the marvels of this land, at glass that didn’t crack when filled with hot liquid.

Baelfire carried the pitcher back to them, refilling mugs with practised ease. He claimed Morraine’s chair when he was done. Morraine disposed of the contents of her strainer and came over to settle into his lap, then shared sips from his mug as Rumplestiltskin picked up the thread of their story.

“I became the Dark One near the end of the ogres’ war… the first ogres’ war,” he said with a glance at Belle. “The local duke controlled the Dark One before me. He prolonged the war to line his purse, but he was running out of soldiers. He lowered the drafting age with every season that passed, until his men were to come for my son.”

“I was fourteen,” Baelfire said. His mouth twisted. “As hot-headed as can be.”

“Ye were a handful, aye,” his father said ruefully. Jaime and Ian followed this exchange with rapt attention.

Wendy whispered something into Jaime’s ear. The little girl giggled.

“I met a man who told me of the Dark One’s secret,” Rumplestiltskin said. “He told me how to kill him or control him, and that it would give me the power to save my son.”

“So Papa snuck into the Duke’s castle and became the next Dark One,” Baelfire said.

“It wasn’t that simple.”

“Seemed like it.”

“Zozo--the Dark One at the time--tricked me into it.” He hugged Evan to him. “He was the Duke’s slave, and it was the only way out for him. 

“Then... I killed every last ogre within a fortnight’s ride. Males, females, and the nursing bairns.”

There was silence, then tiredly, “I dinnae regret a bit of it.”

“Ogres killed my family,” Belle said into the quiet. She took Evan from Rumplestiltskin so he could reach for his teacup. “They were everywhere by the time I found the tree that brought me here.”

She snuggled into his side much as Ian did, the hem of his cabled jumper in her hand. “We would go weeks without making any noise louder than a whisper. The villages were the first to go, then the fortified towns, but by that point….”

“You couldn’t farm anything,” John finished.

“An army travels on its stomach,” Michael added.

Belle nodded, thick wool between her fingers. “It was like being under siege, but with no one to negotiate a truce of any kind with.”

“How did it get that bad?” Baelfire asked. “Ours only lasted so long because the duke kept it going. It certainly never spread to the other kingdoms.”

Belle shook her head. She wished she knew.

Evan made a grab for her hair. She let go of her husband’s jumper to move her hair out of reach, Rumplestiltskin’s eyes following the motion.

John stirred. “If I might speculate?”

“Hit me,” Baelfire said. 

“In any environment,” John said, his spectacles glinting in the light, “elimination of a predator allows another to rise to prominence, whether they prey on living creatures or vegetation. They consume everything available, then perish because there is nothing left to sustain them.”

He sounded as if he were quoting some dry and dusty text. Belle wanted to get her hands on that text.

“Except the Dark One,” Rumplestiltskin disagreed, his thumb exploring the chip in his teacup.

All eyes turned to him.

“Well, he can’t be killed by normal means,” he said over the rim. “Even here.” From Jaime’s wide eyes, Belle wondered how much the little girl had guessed about the events of that morning.

He grimaced, leaning forward to set down the cup. “The power is rather… possessive of its host, shall we say.”

“What do you mean?” Belle asked.

Rumplestiltskin and Baelfire shared a long look. Baelfire tilted his head. Rumplestiltskin stood and walked into the next room, then returned a few moments later carrying an oblong box.

John and Michael slid several of the cups and mugs down the table. Rumplestiltskin set the box in the middle, then lifted away the lid to reveal a long dagger inscribed with his name.

There was no malevolent glimmer or strange light. It was an ordinary blade, though finely crafted.

“This is… the only thing that can kill me,” Rumplestiltskin said. He took Evan from Belle and sat back between her and Ian, who was fast asleep, as though to get as far away from the blade as possible. “It is also the only way to be free of my curse. Not that it would destroy the curse, but merely pass it on to the person who killed me.”

There was no surprise in the faces of the others in the room, only grim acknowledgement.

“What is to say that the ogres would not have eventually trod on Zozo’s toes and caused their own demise?” Wendy asked. “Surely the duke couldn’t have kept him forever?”

Rumplestiltskin nodded slowly. “The dagger corrupts the one who uses it, drives them mad. It has always been this way.”

Michael leaned forward and replaced the lid on the box, hiding the dagger from view. Rumplestiltskin shot him a grateful smile.

There was something in the gesture which reminded Belle of one pulling a shroud over the deceased.

She had been thinking something over. “What if the Dark One was supposed to be there?” she suggested. “For… I don’t know--balance.”

“I beg your pardon?” Rumplestiltskin turned to her.

“There were many dead when I left,” she said. “I don’t think I quite conveyed how bad things were.” In truth, she hadn't spoken of it much at all.

She laid her hand over his, where it wrapped around Evan's tiny shoulders.

“The dwarves--the ones that mine the fairy dust? I heard they were nearly extinct, with only a few remaining.” She didn’t know what had become of Dreamy. “No dust mining means no fairies, no new fairy godmothers.”

Rumplestiltskin had gone from confused to aghast. He was now white as a sheet. Looking around the room, she saw similar expressions on the faces of the others. Even those who hadn’t been born in their land could grasp the horror of the outcome she’d described.

Evan began to fuss. Rumplestiltskin shifted to check his nappy. Morraine raised an eyebrow in question, and Rumplestiltskin shook his head, looking down at Belle’s hand.

“I’m not… fond of fairies,” he said, “but they are necessary.”

“Didn’t they send you here?” she asked.

He nodded. “Coming here cost me my son for a hundred years,” his whisper nearly broke her heart. “Two hundred for him.”

“You were trying to do what you thought best,” Belle said.

Morraine and Baelfire shared another of those speaking glances, then she stood from his lap and retrieved her son from Rumplestiltskin to feed the child.

Baelfire rolled to his feet and approached his father, kneeling off to the side between the settee and the low table. He took Rumplestiltskin’s hand. “I asked you to come here, Papa. I’m sorry.”

“Bae.” Rumplestiltskin reached out and laid his other hand along his son’s cheek, his mouth trembling with tears. “You know I can’t… I killed someone who hurt you by _accident_.”

Baelfire leaned into his father’s hand. Rumplestiltskin made an odd sound like a gasp and a gulp all at the same time. “I know, Papa. You’d have us, I swear it.”

“Bae, if we return to keep the peace or… whatever it is we’d be doing, what’s to keep someone from stealing my curse and causing far more damage?”

Baelfire’s shoulders drooped. He bowed his head, resting it on his father’s knee.

Rumplestiltskin stroked his hair. “I lost you once here, but there…. I make a promise to you, all of you.” He nudged his son up to look him in the eye, then looked from the sleeping Ian to Morraine holding Evan, to Michael to John, to Wendy and Jaime, to Belle, and finally back to Baelfire. “Every single one of you would be in danger, would be _a_ danger, because I would trade my freedom and my life for yours without hesitation.”

“--And it would be a damn foolish move,” John snapped, rising to his feet.

Mouths dropped open in shock around the room. Baelfire’s head whipped around to stare.

“John?” Rumplestiltskin asked.

John sputtered and said, “If one of us were to find ourselves in such a situation, what’s to stop whoever takes your power from harming the rest of us? If it were me, would you let them harm Evan?” he demanded. “Because that’s what you’d be doing.”

Rumplestiltskin unfolded himself from the settee with some difficulty, moving to stand in front of John. John was nearly a head taller than he, but somehow Rumplestiltskin still managed to growl up at him from close range, “I am not choosing between my family.”

John was unmoved. “But your family is choosing between ourselves,” he said quietly.

“He’s right,” Michael said, coming to stand beside his brother. He wasn’t quite as tall, his round face ernest. “It wouldn’t work.”

Rumplestiltskin turned back to John with a frown. “Do you think I love you any less?”

John looked away. Michael placed a hand upon his shoulder and squeezed.

“I made a different promise to your father when he passed, fifty years ago, that if you ever returned to me, I would love you as my own--you and Michael and Wendy. It has not been a difficult promise to keep. You _are_ my family.”

“I’m sorry, Grandpa,” John whispered.

Rumplestiltskin shook his head. “You were my only contact with Bae, all those years. It was you, you and your brother and sister who went with him when he was taken, and it was you two who smuggled all those letters. I would love you even without that promise.”

“But we failed to bring him back.”

Rumplestiltskin clasped his other shoulder. “No, you didn’t,” he said. He pulled him into a hug. 

At some point they found Ian had slumped over, his tousled head in Belle’s lap. Michael scooped him up and carried him from the room, exchanging a glance with John on the way. John followed him.

Jaime watched them go. “Maybe we could ask the fairies to help,” she suggested.

Rumplestiltskin retook his seat, his arm sliding about Belle’s shoulders. “Why would they help me, dear?”

Baelfire sprawled on the floor next to his father.

It was Morraine who answered, “Because they will have no choice.”

“You want… the fairies to help me retain my power.”

Jaime nodded. “Wouldn’t they rather have you, Grandpa, than someone else?”

“They do need their dust as well,” Morraine pointed out. “And they can’t get rid of the ogres without you.”

“What if we were to see the power… not as a commodity, but like a head of state?” Wendy proposed.

Baelfire twitched, and Rumplestiltskin’s hand slid into his hair.

“The president’s kids have to have people following them around all the time,” Jaime said.

“I don’ want fairies spying on my family,” Rumplestiltskin protested.

“Fairies spy on everyone,” Belle said, “but yes, it does sound odd when you put it that way. The difference would be that they would be obligated to assist in times of crisis.”

“It sounds like we ought to make a treaty with them,” Wendy said.

“The Dark One, form a treaty with fairies?” Rumplestiltskin asked skeptically.

Morraine hummed in thought, turning Evan to nurse on her other side. “Maybe not you; us.”

“Like ambassadors!” Jaime cried.

“We need a truce,” Baelfire concluded. “It’s silly to be quarrelling with the fairies when we don’t have to.”

“But the fairies have always warred with the Dark One,” Rumplestiltskin objected.

Michael returned then, John behind him. Baelfire nodded to them and leaned his head back against the settee. “I don’t think you have to, Papa,” he said. “We’re in a rather unique position, wouldn’t you say?”

“What if they decided that they needed you there?” Wendy asked.

“Fairies don’t kill,” Belle pointed out.

Rumplestiltskin frowned in distaste. “They’d wan’ me to do they dirty work, then?”

“Don’t kill, won’t kill, or can’t kill?” John asked. He seemed calmer now.

“Light magic is incapable of killing,” Rumplestiltskin answered quietly. “When light mages attempt to use their magic for harm, the magic turns dark. It happened to one of the fairies long ago, shortly after Merlin fell.”

Belle shivered. “Did she ever come back from it?”

He shook his head. “The second Dark One killed her, and the fairies never let it happen again. In any case, ogres are immune to most magic.”

“Most magic?” she asked.

Her husband made a small dramatic gesture, a graceful twist of the hand.

The longer she knew him, the more he emerged from his shell. There was a vibrant, charming showman inside of him, and every now and then she would catch glimpses that made her insides tighten with want.

Morraine watched their interplay with thinly-veiled amusement. Without seeing either of them beyond his peripheral vision, Baelfire rolled his eyes. “Stop it already, will you?”

His father tugged his hair. “Sorry, what?”

“So the ogres overran the other land because no one was able to stop them?” Michael asked, diverting them.

“They followed many years of conflict,” Belle replied. She took Rumplestiltskin’s hand and twined it with her own. “By the time their numbers started to grow, all else was depleted.”

John asked, “How are the fairies to know we won’t renege on our side of the bargain?”

Baelfire shrugged. “What’s to stop the fairies from bailing on theirs?” 

Sleepily, Jaime sat up in Wendy’s lap. “When King George was mean to the Americans, they got rid of him.”

“To put it succinctly,” Wendy said dryly. Then, “Jaime, ow,” she complained. “You’re getting too big.”

“Did they have him assassinated?” Belle asked.

Wendy snorted, a most unladylike sound. “They don’t hold with that here, not officially. They think it’s a dangerous precedent.”

She frowned thoughtfully, shifting the little girl draped over her lap. “Jaime, why did your teacher set your class to writing letters to elected officials?”

Jaime yawned. “My teacher said that if our representatives--” she pronounced the long word carefully “--don’t do what enough people want, then we can vote them out, so they have to listen to us.”

She peered at Rumplestiltskin around the wing of the chair. “Grandpa, do fairies vote?”

“I’m afraid fairies don’t dae democracy, dear.”

“How do you know so much about them?” Belle asked.

He curled his hand around hers and said, “The fairies and the Dark Ones have been at odds since the first of us.”

“You remember all of that?”

He looked at her, brown eyes wary. “Not all of it. Some of it is clearer than others.”

She heard Baelfire loop an arm around Rumplestiltskin’s calf, felt the movement below and saw the turn of the head, a second set of brown eyes cautioning her.

It would be too easy to hurt her husband here. She squeezed his hand and let the subject go.

“The fairies are more of a monarchy,” Rumplestiltskin told Jaime, and found she had fallen asleep.

“So it would be a treaty, then,” Baelfire said, climbing to his feet to take his daughter from Wendy.

Rumplestiltskin nodded. “It would make our position stronger if we were not at odds with them, even if they were inept at their task.”

“We can’t afford for them to be inept,” Morraine put in, refastening her blouse and standing. Evan had gone to sleep as well.

Baelfire turned at the door, Jaime in his arms. “It’s late; we should not make decisions tonight.”

“Tomorrow evening, then,” Belle said, and they adjourned.

~


	18. Chapter 18

Belle found him in his workshop after breakfast.

The lathe rumbled loudly as Baelfire set a freshly-sharpened blade into the edge of a log of bird’s-eye maple, rotating the wood at high speed. Slivers of wood shavings fell to the floor, the piece taking shape under his hands.

He didn’t hear Belle at the door, nor see her until he looked up. He waved to her and cut the power, setting the blade in its rack. The lathe wound down with a noisy purr.

“Were you looking for me?” he asked, hanging his earmuffs on a peg. Sound flooded back in, always slightly disorienting.

“Maybe. I came down to check the clothes washer, but it’s not done yet.” She looked around curiously, stepping inside. “Rumple showed me some of your work.”

“Want to see?”

Her eyes lit up. She’d seen the lathe run, so he pulled out a few half-finished pieces for her, demonstrating the process.

“...then you stain them to maintain the surface, make the color richer, and you get this.”

He lifted a finished bowl from the shelf, similar to the one he’d been making. It was heavy, so it went on a stool for her perusal.

“It’s lovely,” she said, admiring its grain. She touched it gently, as if afraid she’d break it.

She sighed. “We wouldn’t have tools like this, in the other land. I’m afraid I’ve got used to them already.”

“We have some,” he said. “Or had. They just take longer. I have to say I wouldn’t miss the noise.”

She nodded.

“You know half of the guys I went to school with are nearly deaf by now?”

“Is it that damaging?”

“Over time, yeah. When you’re young and stupid, you think you can get away without these--” he waved at the rack of protective equipment, pulling off the goggles he still wore and adding them to the lot. He hardly noticed them anymore.

“Papa was furious when he caught me working without them. He’s at his worst when he thinks one of us is threatened.”

“That makes sense.”

Baelfire was quiet; something had been niggling at him all morning.

“Last night, when he said he’d killed a man who’d hurt me by accident… it wasn’t really true.

“I was playing in the street, and our ball got away from us. I ran after it, right in front of someone’s donkey cart. It was parked, right? But I skinned my knee.”

He retrieved a broom and began to clear the wood shavings from the floor.

“The baker wasn’t even there, Belle. I might as well have run into a wall.”

He scooped the shavings by handfuls into a bin marked ‘compost.’

“He heard the noise; I’d frightened his beast.”

A donkey could kick a cart like that to pieces in seconds if it had a mind to.

“He was angry, but then he saw it was me, and a little scrape! He went frantic, tried to buy me off, but I didn’t want anything to do with that.”

He closed the bin and found the dustpan. He turned it in his hands, straightening the bent metal edge.

Belle was watching him.

“Then Papa showed up.”

He tossed the dustpan onto the workbench and put away the bowl he’d got out, inviting her to sit. He leaned on the bench, dragging his hands over his face.

“I never understood why we didn’t leave after he got his power. I think he stayed for me. I had friends there, until… but you heard Morrie, last night. Our neighbors were ‘not kind.’ My wife has a gift for understatement. She saw more than I did, because Papa would rather those interactions occur in front of others than with me there.

“Did he tell you why he walks with that cane?”

Her eyes unfocused, remembering. “Some. He said he’d done it to himself.”

If he knew his papa, Rumplestiltskin had made it sound like the worst kind of crime.

“Morrie and Wendy and I, we were in Neverland for two hundred years. That’s a lot of time for a kid to think, Belle.”

He smiled grimly. “My papa is the bravest man I’ve ever known.”

Belle didn’t argue.

Oh yes, he liked this tiny woman.

He sighed. He’d accused his papa of fidgeting. He snatched up a flat-sided drafting pencil, flipping it through his fingers in patterns.

“How cowardly is it to follow your peers into suicide because you are afraid of what others might think of you?” He laughed derisively. “Do you know they blamed him for losing the next battle?”

“One man, to turn the tide against the ogres?”

“Aye, that,” he imitated his papa. “It was a massacre. Then he came back for me, and raised me in the very same town where everyone knew him.”

He missed a step, and the pencil dropped from his fingers to clatter onto the benchtop. He scowled at it. “He thought he’d hid the worst of it from me. Maybe he did, from what Morrie says.

“Then he got his magic, and he found out that the baker’s boy and I _didn’t get along_.” 

He didn’t have to explain what that meant; Belle nodded.

“He said it was time he ‘had a word with’ the baker.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen. What if it wasn’t just ‘a word?’ I knew the magic had changed him, and I didn’t want him solving my problems for me, so I asked him not to.

“Then the incident with the donkey, and he saw the blood. I think…” he said slowly “I didn’t really believe he’d kill the baker. He turned him into a snail.”

“A snail?”

“I asked him, early, not to use magic to kill. I mean, I didn't want him to kill at all, but the magic changes people, and he didn’t need it if he were so inclined.”

She frowned at him, puzzled.

“He’s fast,” Baelfire explained. “It makes him really strong, too, even without spells or--” He shrugged. “I think he lived with his foot like that for so long that being able to move normally was something he revelled in. That’s something he gave up, again, when he came here with us.”

He spun the dustpan on the benchtop, thinking. “It’s strange, what living without fear does to someone. That’s a different kind of magic.”

“What was he like?” Belle asked.

“He’s quieter here?” he mused, tilting his head. “He could be playful, chipper like a kid, or moody, or off the walls like Ian on a sugar high.”

He laughed. “Maybe that’s what it was--like a sugar high, but from magic.”

He sobered, digging at a bit of glue with the pan.

“Then there were times he’d go cold, like a different person, but never with me.” He caught her eye. There could be no mistaking this--it was important. _Never_ with me, Belle.”

She nodded. “The snail?” she asked.

“The snail wasn’t dead. He didn’t use the magic to kill, technically. Papa is good with loopholes. He stepped on the snail.”

Baelfire pushed off of the bench and swept up the remainder of the wood shavings, disposing of them and hanging the dustpan in its place. He put a few tools away, and used an old paintbrush to clean the debris from the clutter on the bench. Sawdust stuck to wet varnish if left to blow about.

He rolled the dowel of an unfinished spindle between his hands, checking it for flaws.

Belle hadn’t left.

“You know what always bugged me?” he asked her, finding a bit of sandpaper to smooth an edge. “He could have turned the baker back, if he’d wanted to.”

She kicked the leg of her stool, her foot exploring the supporting bar.

He sighed, threw the sandpaper down. “I asked him to stop. I’m not sure if I believed he’d really go that far. Maybe if I’d… I don’t know.”

He looked at her helplessly, the restless energy drained out of him now.

She shook her head. “You _didn’t_ know.”

“I suppose I learned that one the hard way.”

“You said he is worse when he thinks you are threatened?”

Baelfire dragged over another stool, perching on top of it, one knee drawn up to his chest. “Any of us, yeah. You too, now,” he warned her.

She processed this. “Family brings out the best and the worst in us, doesn’t it?”

“The very worst,” he agreed.

“He’s terrified of losing you.”

“Or you.”

She seemed surprised to be included so.

He’d have to spell this out, perhaps. “When Papa loves, he loves with everything in him. He might be… afraid he’ll be rejected, but he doesn’t hold back.”

Gods, she was going to cry.

“Papa’s got himself into a doozy with you, hasn’t he?”

She sniffled, her watery gaze drifting over his shelves full of finished items. “Do you know what first attracted me to your father?”

He winced. “Belle!” he protested.

She smiled wetly. “It was his care for his family. I thought him handsome enough at the time--”

Baelfire hid his face in his hands. There were no tissues in here!

She shrugged. “Many men are.”

She reached across the space between them and touched his knee.

He peeked around his fingers.

She drew back, studying the floor.

“I lost my family, Baelfire. My mother when I was a child, my father to ogres, and the people I’d grown up with. My fiancé... there was no love there, but he was my future, and then he died too. I was alone for a long time.”

Her mouth quirked. “A friend, Olive, told me once, ‘There’s something not fair about men who are good with children.’”

Baelfire snorted, his hands falling away to hug his knee.

“Rumplestiltskin had that in spades. He could have been the ugliest man I’d ever met--” she grinned “--lucky for me he’s not--and still be the most attractive.”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Was she going to start with that again?

“It might have taken me longer,” she said ruefully.

Dammit. “Belle...” he whined. He’d have given Ian a run for his money.

She wrinkled her nose at him fondly. “Do you understand?”

No more! “I get it,” he said hastily. “I get it!”

She laughed at him.

“Baelfire…” she trailed off, then said, “It is easy to do terrible things in the name of defending those we love.”

She paused, and Baelfire wondered what she’d done, or had seen done. He didn’t ask.

“So very easy.”

He nodded.

“When Rumplestiltskin behaved the worst, was it when he thought he was acting in your interest?”

“He said... he was defending what was his.”

“Hmm.”

“Do you want to go back?”

“... I think we _should_.”

“But you don’t want to.”

She bit her lip, then said, “Rumple is happy here.”

“I think… he would be happy wherever his family was. We had an argument one day, about magic, and he said he could offer me anything. I said I just wanted him, and he looked like I’d given him the world.”

The washer clicked in the next room, and she stood. “He would, wouldn’t he?”

Baelfire donned the goggles again. “This will be loud,” he warned her, picking up the earmuffs.

He waited until she was gone before he started the lathe.

~

He resurfaced closer to lunchtime to find his father spinning, Belle next to him, his denim-clad calf in contact with her knee.

Baelfire blinked.

Morraine turned at his approach, her glance darting between his father and him.

She smiled.

If his father could cause his appearance to bear a constant resemblance to a tomato, Baelfire could kiss Morraine in front of him.

While his back was turned.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Belle giggle.

John and Michael were working in the kitchen. He went to help them.

~

A colander of potatoes in front of him, he asked John.

John frowned, his thick glasses distorting the expression. “Of course we’d come with you, Bae.”

His London accent had never faded, even after all the lands he and Michael had been to. If anything, it had got thicker. They had all chosen to cling to their identities in their own ways.

Michael switched out the bowls, set the sliced potato pieces on the counter. “It would hardly be the first time we’d been there.”

Baelfire’s knife slipped. He readjusted it and asked, “You--”

John looked at him levelly. “Years ago now. Time seems to move there fastest.”

“The ogres hadn’t got so bad, yet,” Michael said, leaning on the sink.

“Were there many….”

“Orphans?” Michael asked. He sighed, onion skin crackling under his fingers. “Yeah.”

~

He and his father did the washing-up after lunch. Papa always found it easier to talk when he had something in his hands.

“What if I were to hurt one of you, Baelfire?” his father demanded, chiseling at a bit of burnt potato.

Baelfire swung his dishtowel over his shoulder and regarded him with astonished concern. “Papa, I was never afraid that you would hurt me. Someone else, sure--but never me. Never.”

Morraine put a dish of leftovers in the refrigerator and set the empty pan next to the sink. “Do you think I’d have come with you if I were afraid of you, Papa?”

Papa frowned at her. “But I doon have my magic here.”

“People don’t need magic to hurt others,” she said.

~


	19. Chapter 19

“You know I had the biggest case of hero-worship ever?” Morraine said.

They were folding laundry, seated on a bench in an alcove near the stairs, a basket on the floor.

“I was fourteen, and I…” she fumbled the last fold. “I was living a nightmare.”

She didn’t need to elaborate. Belle took the towel from her, added it to the pile at her side.

“I’m sorry. It was two hundred years ago. You’d think….”

“Of course not.” Belle sorted through the basket, separating out the smaller items. She laid the squares of cloth in a stack to be folded.

Morraine started a pillowcase. “Rumplestiltskin rescued me.” She whipped it in the air, _crack_ ing it to find the edges.

“He found me in the knight’s tent and left me with Mother. Then he went after the knight and killed him.”

Belle handed her the next. She thought perhaps Morraine knew the man’s name, but didn’t want to say it.

“My father… he told me what happened, later. He wanted me to know the knight was dead.” She handled this one more gently. It was edged in lace.

She smoothed it flat over her lap. “When they came for me on my birthday, Mother tried to stab the knight. She didn’t have a chance, but she did it anyway.”

She folded it slowly. “She would have died for me.”

“How--”

“How did she live?” She switched for the next, a towel.

Belle nodded.

“The Dark One before Rum, he stopped her and my father.”

Belle would have asked what he’d done, but Morraine looked down.

“It was horrible,” she said. “The knights, they all thought it was a big joke.”

The towel snapped, its corners matching. “Then they took me away.”

The pile was getting too high.

“And let your parents live,” Belle finished.

She looked for a place to move it to.

“There’s a chair, over there.” Morraine pointed. “They forgot about them, really. Like they were garbage.”

“Your mother sounds rather formidable.”

Morraine smiled. “She was.”

~


	20. Chapter 20

This house had seen many family gatherings over the years, but none so pivotal as what must pass tonight.

His family had grown again, Belle a solid warmth at his side.

Ian claimed his spot in Michael’s lap--just as he had the day Evan was born, the two of them squeezed into a vinyl hospital chair that creaked whenever they stirred.

Morraine held Jaime close for this, her daughter curled with her in Rumplestiltskin’s wingback chair.

Wendy turned one of Baelfire’s early carvings, a hair ornament, in her fingers.

Evan slept against John’s shoulder, the haunted sibling less hollow tonight. Rumplestiltskin knew that look--he’d worn it enough times himself. Family went a long way to healing the hurts of years, even hurts like the ones they carried.

No matter how much power he acquired, or how much time passed, on many days he was still the spinner.

The spinner who looked to a beggar for empathy.

_The only choice I have, is which corner to hide in._

The spinner who would protect his family at any cost.

Everything hurt more in the cold.

Baelfire, often restless, pulled his knees up to his chest and leaned against the antique settee by Rumplestiltskin’s calf. He smelled of sawdust and varnish.

Rumplestiltskin picked a bit of wood shaving from his hair.

“I won’t lie to you;” he addressed them quietly, playing with the curled sliver, “I have spent every day since we came to this land worrying or regretting that I do not have the power to protect my family.”

Baelfire reached up over his shoulder, and Rumplestiltskin clasped his hand, held it by his knee.

“I _want_ the magic,” he confessed, “but no’ at the cost of losing any of you.”

“You’re not going to lose us, Papa.”

Rumplestiltskin shivered. “You don’t know that.”

“I mean,” he rolled his head to look at him, as though it were obvious, “we’re not going to leave you.”

Obvious. He couldn’t breathe.

“You can’t drive us away, either,” Morraine added.

Belle took his other hand, steadied him. “We will not let go of you.”

She’d been quite adamant about that, early.

Michael grinned. “We’ll gang up on you, if we have to.”

Gang up on--

They would, and he would welcome it, as long as they stayed with him.

He needed them.

”If we go, we will have a secret there, one that could get us all killed.”

John rested his cheek on Evan’s head. “We have a secret here,” he pointed out, “that we cannot tell anyone in this land if they do not become family.”

Morraine agreed. “Papa, you spent more than a hundred years here before meeting Belle. She is from the other land. What are the odds that the others in our family will meet anyone suitable if we stay?”

She stroked Jaime’s hair. “The people of this land may never understand us.”

He’d seen them struggle, but--

“We're different,” Michael said. “Where we’ve been, where we come from, it’s part of us. It’s who we are to each other. Not being able to tell anyone--it’s a terrible way to live.”

Baelfire released his hand, and dug in a pocket for a bit of wood. “We have an out,” he said, turning the piece, a small half-carved sheep. “We can come back here, if everything goes south.”

“Will we want to, once we put down roots?” Morraine wondered.

“It could be forever,” Rumplestiltskin said.

Belle squeezed the hand she held. “Then we will go with you, forever.”

~ 

She was tracing his chest as they drifted towards sleep. Over and under, patterns and diamonds, crossed comfort and safety.

She saw him watching, and smiled. Her gentle touch grew firmer, pausing where her knots would lay, the edge of her nail setting dull indented lines in his skin.

“My magic makes my foot work properly again.” Impending sleep weighed down the words. “The pain goes away.”

“Hmm. Baelfire said as much.” She considered him. “You did not.”

He hadn't wanted it to be a part of their decision-making. Afraid she would disapprove of his reticence, he closed his eyes. “There are bigger things at stake.”

Her hand stopped its motion, the slicing caress of her nail. “So you tell me this only after we have decided.”

Was she unhappy with him? He had to know.

Her smile was warm, if sad. “I love you, Rumple.”

He fell asleep with her hand in his hair.

~


	21. Chapter 21

The wind whipped about the docks, freezing Baelfire to the bone. It bit at his hands, his face. He lifted a large seashell, spoke into it:

 _Ariel_.

The creak of planks under his feet, the slack-drape-stretch of mooring lines, the dull bump of buoys, a gull's screaming quarrel and its dry flap of feathers.

All of these carried.

The name did not.

The sound was swallowed in the shell, muffled as though he'd spoken into a pillow.

Names had power, Papa said. There was magic in them, even here.

The water below began to burble, then boil like water in a pot over flame. 

He thought Ariel would have aged in the time since he’d seen her last, but he wasn’t prepared for the sight that met him. 

She looked like a woman in her sixties. The frigid water slid off of her vibrant red hair, grey silvering the temples. Deep crow’s feet creased at the corners of her eyes when she smiled.

“Baelfire! You’re still just a lad!” she laughed.

He recovered from his surprise and knelt on the dock to speak with her. “And you are lovelier than ever. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

“The Enchanted Forest, mostly,” she replied. “You told me about it, remember? So I had to see it.”

“You’ve been there all this time?”

She beamed at him, a secret about her smile. “I want you to meet Eric!” she said. “Can you come?”

“You mean he’s not here with you?”

She gasped, delighted. “I haven’t told you, have I? Oh, it’s been so long!” She pushed off of the dock and spun about in the water. Baelfire leaned back to avoid the spray. “He’s human, from the Enchanted Forest.”

“Aren’t you--” he stopped, unsure how to say it.

“Oh no, not all the time. Magic, silly! Daddy gave me something. I’d show you, but it looks cold here, and you humans are so strange about skin.” 

Baelfire blushed. “I’m not sure it would work here,” he said. “This is supposed to be a land without magic. Listen, I’ll do you one better. I’d love to meet your Eric. My family and I, we want to go home. We’d like to go home to stay.”

Ariel paused in treading water. She ducked under the surface and came up again. “Didn’t you travel here because--”

He nodded. “It was a mistake,” he said, clutching his coat about himself. It was freezing out here, though Ariel didn’t seem a bit bothered by the ice floating in chunks about her arms.

She tilted her head. “When should my sisters and I come?”

“Two days?” he asked.

“Two days.” She grinned up at him. “We’ll be here.”

~

Belle woke to Rumplestiltskin making feather-light lines on her skin, over her shoulder, and down her arm. Drowsy, she watched him, her leg draped over him. Curious, she hid her awareness under lidded eyes.

Unsuccessfully. From her shoulder to her nipple, his finger swept down, circled it into an aching peak.

She gasped, and he kissed her, her breast captured in his palm.

His mouth was greedy; he wanted, and his greed stoked hers. She stretched against him, the fog of sleep rolling away, shifted to find the friction she craved. Blankets tumbled from them at the movement, the cool draft a caress on her warming skin. Up, she surged as though for air, hands braced on his wiry shoulders. He followed her lips until he could not reach, sank back on his pillow with eyes that sparkled in the dim morning light.

Those eyes tracked her; her breath came short, like she'd been running, and her chest heaved. He kneaded her breast, rolled her nipple between his fingers, his coarser callouses igniting the delicate tissue. He delighted in her stifled cries, the shiver in her abdomen, one hand pressing over its planes.

Down, and his thumb found her.

“Rumple!”

He grinned, turned her and bore her to the mattress, the back of her head cupped in his hand. Slow, he kissed her, his hair tickling her cheeks and temple. His erection dragged across her hip, his knees gathering under him, to either side of her.

His knee wedged between her thighs; she pressed wanton into him, her hands on his wrists. He twisted, then palm-to-palm, his fingers wove with hers.

Out, the longer span of his arms spread hers, the stretch of muscle and tendon. Arch and tension, his knee not enough. When did the word ‘hollow’ change its meaning?

He watched her as though he didn't quite believe she were real.

Her feet dug into the mattress; her head fell back. She panted, shifted, ground into him. Up, and the velvet head of his cock slid along her thigh. His hips jerked, and his eyes slammed shut.

His reserve shattered.

Her legs gaping wide, he found her, drove into her, and caught her breathy scream in his mouth. Again, and his tongue delved deeper, invaded her. Again, and his mouth withdrew from her, his brown eyes avid on her face.

His hands pinned hers; she pushed against him, met him, bent in two and slipped in the sweat gathering on their skin.

He laughed; her laughter had no sound. Gasps whined between them--higher.

His mouth came down on hers.

~

She wondered if she would be sore, later. The last faded from them, and his eyelids were soft under her lips, his muscles lax against her arms, her chest. He would have pulled out, but she held him tighter, consented to roll to the side, his softening cock still fitted within her, her legs holding him close.

His nose bumped hers.

“You're possessive,” he said.

She giggled. “Yes.”

Lips quirked, he whispered, “I like it.”

At some point one of them shifted. No longer joined, she remembered the way she'd woken, with his caress on her skin in feather-light lines. Experimentally, she traced the same pattern down his arm, what she could reach of him, and felt him go still.

From his shoulder to his nipple, her finger echoed him, circled it into a tight bud.

He didn't make a sound.

Her hand on his chest pressed him into the blankets, held him there. His brow furrowed with anxiety, his heartbeat gone rapid under her palm.

She kissed him, and it slowed.

“I'm not done with you,” she promised him.

He took her hand and brushed her knuckles with his lips in reply.

It was all she could do not to crawl right back under the covers with him.

~

They retreated once more after breakfast. She led him to their bed and stripped him, raising her arms in turn for him to pull her nightgown over her head. His fingers under the waistband of her underwear caressed her; his wrists pushed it down, her rear in his hands, the back of her thighs, the creases behind her knees.

Crouching was out of the question for him; he knelt, and the scrap of fabric fluttered about her toes. His touch skimmed her calves, teased at the edge of her foot until she lifted it, then the other.

Up, from her feet to her calves, the back of her knees, slow, unhurried. His mouth paired with his hands, light, lingering kisses meandering over her thigh, circles scritched where his fingers wandered.

Nothing burned, only warmth. His head bowed when he knelt up, the jut of her hip a path that he followed, the line of his shoulders eclipsing much of him. The scarred slope of his back laid out before her, his knobbled spine the ridge of a dragon's armoured plates. Salted drifts of reddish-brown ran soft between her fingers, the cords of his neck firm.

She found his pulse, strong against her skin. He hadn't yet shaved, his stubble tiny sharp points inside her palm.

Light pressure on his chin, and he lifted it to look at her, closed his eyes in pleasure at the stroke of her nails on his scalp.

Anticipation--she helped him to his feet, kissed him. His mouth yielded to hers, none of the force she'd so recently enjoyed.

“A moment, my love,” she told him, and stepped away to retrieve the thicker of their ropes from its hiding place, its loops spilling in waves over her.

She passed the bundle to him. He clutched it and the gnarled-wood cane. His eyes flicked to hers, wide and questioning.

She reached up to touch his cheek. “I trust you, Rumplestiltskin.”

“You should na,” was his whispered reply, but he leaned into her hand.

She did, with everything in her. 

“What is it that you like about this?” she asked him.

There was a swallow, a shifting of feet. “It feels safe,” he said.

Her thumb ran up his cheek, over his eyelid. “Why?”

His breath came shuddering. “I like… being able to trust.”

Every time, he trusted her more. He loved her, but love and trust were not the same. One did not even ensure the other. Trust couldn't be given for the asking, as much as the giver might want to.

Rumplestiltskin was proving to himself, in the fastest way possible, that he could trust her. Over and over again, with an affirmation normally won by two people through years and decades.

She questioned herself. How could she claim that security, so easily, so soon?

Trust engendered trust. Perhaps in trusting her, he gave her that.

The thought humbled her.

“Show me?”

His forehead on hers, the bundle between them, he hesitated. The fingers of one hand rubbed together; she caught his hand, held it to her mouth. A long moment, and he dipped his head to kiss her.

She opened to him, their hands tucking between them. His nose bumped hers.

“Yes, if you wish.”

His lips pressed into the bridge of her nose, up between her eyebrows, and he stepped back from her, his eyes falling to the bundle as he unravelled its loops.

When he turned away, one end of the rope went around the bedpost at the head; he pulled until that end was even with its match. A series of knots, the last bulkier than the rest, and he tossed the two lengths over the other side.

When he looked at her from the bed, he seemed surprised to find her still present. Almost shyly, he held out his hand to her, and she went to him, climbed up beside him.

He laid her down as though she were a child, an arm under her knees, the other under her shoulders.

His hands trembled, threading her arm through opposite-winding coils until the heaviest knot nestled in her palm.

He brushed her hair aside, gentle, straddled her to lift her upper body. His rope passed over her shoulder and under her, crossing between her shoulderblades, and around to tuck below her breasts. Under, up, over the next shoulder, her other bicep and down that arm to her wrist.

Then the other rope, down between her breasts, around her ribcage, and up again. Over the next shoulder, her other bicep and down her arm to her wrist.

Tension, he knelt at her side, a series of slip-knots beginning at her palm, and around the other post. He'd left her an escape, the weight of the ropes, but not their strength, holding her on display.

Sometime during the last knots, it occurred to her that her husband knew exactly what he was doing.

And hadn't told her.

Where had…? _Oh_.

Suddenly, his hesitance took on a new light. How much did he remember? How much of it did he wish he couldn't?

More slip-knots, the long ends thumping softly onto the floor. The backs of his knuckles skimmed along her breast, his fingers tugged and tested the lay of rope, pulled an intersection of lines out from under her elbow.

His brow furrowed with anxious question; he looked to her for her approval.

She would kiss that doubt from him, that vulnerability that said she could cut him down with a word. He was out of her reach; she could only arch towards him, clinging to heavy knots for leverage.

She needed to touch him.

“Rumple-”

Obediently, he stooped and kissed her. _Yes_.

She was the first to withdraw, releasing him, his cheek sliding stubbled against her lips. His gaze roamed over her, splayed out for him.

“No one will come looking for us,” he told her, “even if we were to spend the entire morning in here.”

The entire morning. She shivered.

His hand on her belly seemed more present, more real, the focus of her attention. Her awareness centred on it, the texture of his caress.

“Are you sore?” he asked her.

“A little,” she admitted reluctantly. Then, for the guilt and worry in every line of him, added, “It's a good kind of soreness.”

So accustomed had she become to softening her words with touch that she felt at a loss. She must dissuade his fears, or she knew he would never do it again. She dearly wanted him to do that again, and often.

She wanted _him_.

Her body knew her mind better than she. Her thighs fell open; she saw him breathe, the scent of her arousal evident even to her.

“ _Belle_.” Her name shuddered from him on a whisper.

She'd been distracting herself, when her hands were free. She wanted to touch; his touch tightened her nipples into peaks, nearly painful. He reached for one, and the merest brush of his fingers made her gasp.

He glanced up at her, startled. Something must have bled past her inarticulate state, something needing answer, needing remedy, for his uncertainty vanished.

“How many orgasms... do you think you can bear before you need something more than my mouth and my hand?”

 _He'd_ taught her that word.

“Ungh.”

He smiled, named a number.

“Is that a bet?” she challenged him.

“It could be.” His hand rubbed firmly over her belly, hip bone to rib and sternum, rib and kidney and bone.

She named another, higher.

Something calculating, and he pressed his palm over her sex. “The person to beg first, loses.“

She was close to it now. Up, into his hand. She didn't quite grind. Not yet.

“To beg for your cock, in me,” she clarified.

He faltered. “Yes.”

“That's hardly fair to you.”

He shrugged. His palm dragged up, slid down, and pressed again. He wasn't watching his hand--he was watching her.

She lost the bet, because he needed her to.

~

Baelfire could taste Morraine’s venison before he even opened the door, the aroma of roasting meat evident from the moment he pulled up in the driveway.

John had his head bent over his laptop with Belle, the two of them rapidly ploughing through a list of books. Tall stacks already leaned next to the door, a mixture of textbooks and picks from the varied contents of their own shelves.

Morraine nursed Evan before the fire, her head tilted back against the upholstery. She stirred at the sound of the door, and smiled at his lips in her hair.

“Did you reach her?” she asked,

“Two days,” he confirmed, circling to perch on the low table.

She moved Evan to her other side and said, “Ian and Jaime were reading fairy tales yesterday.”

“Before school today as well.”

Papa’s printer started up then, hummed in the background. A familiar sound, and Morraine cast a thoughtful glance in its direction.

“We’ve come a long way, you and I.”

He took her hand, the one not supporting their son. “There’s no one I would have rathered live those years with.”

Her eyes gone misty, she pursed her lips and squeezed his hand. “I wanted more than anything to grow up.”

“Fourteen was a rough year, huh?”

~

Over an early supper, Baelfire snuck glances at his papa.

Papa caught him at it, before too long. A raised eyebrow in query, and Baelfire gave up the pretence, confessing,

“I missed seeing my papa, back then.”

Seated at the coffee table, Belle and John were once more hard at work, their voices low.

Papa didn't ask what he meant, but-- “You’ll still see me,” he said. “I'm no’ going anywhere.”

“‘Course not.” Baelfire mustered up a cocky grin, projecting a confidence he did not feel. “We won't let you.”

Papa laughed.

Worried, Jaime asked, “Why didn’t you see grandpa?”

Baelfire did not want to tell her, how Papa’s changed appearance could disquiet even the most stoic of men, as if the ugliness of his curse were reflected outside.

To see that fear in his grandchildren would devastate Papa.

“I look different, with magic,” Papa said softly. “It can be… off-putting.”

Curiosity on the tip of her tongue, Baelfire shook his head at her, mouthing ‘later.’

His eyes on his plate, Papa didn’t see them.

Jaime’s pinky finger rose from her fork, flicked at him.

A glance at Papa, and he flicked his back.

 _Pinky swear_.

Papa wasn’t watching them; he was watching Belle.

“Did you tell her?”

An expression of fleeting terror passed over him.

No, then.

Baelfire clasped his shoulder. “She’s not that kind of woman, Papa.”

Slowly, Papa nodded.

“You didn't look like you,” Baelfire said, in between cutting Ian’s meat. “It was….” He frowned. “It was hard to find you, under all that.”

“I know.”

Papa set his fork down then, and reached across the corner of the table. Baelfire took his hand, wordlessly examined his human skin, committed it to memory.

Solemnly, he promised him, “I will learn to find you, Papa. We all will.”

~

“We never did get to go out on the snowmobile,” Rumplestiltskin said, watching the others through the window.

Belle leaned her head back against his cheek and sighed. “It looked like such fun.”

She could hear Ian and Jaime’s voices outside, chased by male shouts and Wendy’s higher pitch.

“Plenty of snow right now,” Baelfire pointed out. “If you leave soon, you should be able to make it to the ridge by sunset. Moon’s nearly full, so lots of light on the snow later.” He checked a pot of hot chocolate on the stove and turned down the heat. “You two want a Thermos to take along?”

~

 _Blatt-blatt-blatt_ , the snowmobile’s conveyor-belt treads churned the snow, sending it flying out behind them. This was the ‘tame’ trail, Baelfire had assured her.

She was glad she was wrapped up as well as she was. The snow here would not be melting any time soon, possibly not until spring. It was cold, and the wind bit her cheeks, but Rumplestiltskin’s back against her chest was warm.

He took a corner just a little too fast. She clung to him tighter, her chin over his shoulder. She knew why he did it; she could see his delighted grin just past her nose, mischief crinkling his eyes with laughter.

They reached the ridge just as the sun was beginning to set. The town lay like pebbles in a field below them, the setting sun muted with the promise of yet more snow. The sky was leaden and grey.

They braced the snowmobile against a stump and climbed off, shaking out stiffness from the ride before climbing up onto a wide log, snow scattering in their wake.

Rumplestiltskin was quiet, pouring a cup of fragrant cocoa into the lid of their Thermos. He sipped it to test the temperature, then passed it to Belle.

It warmed her down to her toes. She was going to miss chocolate.

She passed the cup back to Rumplestiltskin and scooted closer to him, her leg plastered against his.

“What is it?” she asked.

He showed no surprise at her question, nor asked her what she meant.

“The Dark One’s curse changes people, Belle. Inside… and out.”

His head was bent; he stared into their cup as though it held answers. “I’m afraid you won’t like what you find in th’ other land.”

She took the cup from him and set it aside in a nest of snow, then turned her back on the sunset and straddled his lap, her calves hanging down the other side of the log.

She kissed him softly and set her forehead against his, regarding him solemnly. “I fell in love with this,” she said, placing her gloved hand over his heart. “This will not change, will it?”

Rumplestiltskin closed his eyes for a moment, thinking over her question. He clasped her hand between them, his other arm encircling her waist. “Bae said that the curse turned me into a monster.”

“Bae loves you, Rumple.”

“Despite everything, yes.”

“We _will_ make this work, my love. All of us.”

He brushed her nose with his and seemed to come to a decision. “That dagger can stop me, Belle.” His eyes glinted dully in the light of the setting sun at her back. “It can kill me, but it can also control me.”

Her fingers dug into his coat. “How much control?” she asked, after a long moment.

He shuddered, his words going clipped and precise. “Everything. From whether I breathe to committing the worst atrocities you can imagine… or preventing them. No one would be safe if it were to fall into the wrong hands.”

“So the other night,” she whispered, “when you said you’d trade your freedom… that’s what you meant?”

He nodded, a small movement against her skin. “I want you to have it.”

She froze. She couldn’t breathe. “No!” she cried, “No--I am your wife; I will NOT be your jailer!”

“Belle, please--” there were tears in his eyes; she wiped them away as they fell. Her choked swallow stuttered in puffs, the frozen air clinging on her thumbs, his cheeks.

Her cheeks. “Don’t make me cry out here, Rumple. It’s too cold.”

He chuckled, an odd, wet sound.

“It’s too easily stolen from me," she said. "You are the very best person to hold that dagger, not me. Not anyone.”

She felt it when he agreed, but--

“I’m afraid, Belle.”

“And that’s all right,” she assured him fondly. “We will be here for you, and we will not let you go.”

~


	22. Chapter 22

Baelfire found Harry in his repair shop, a small SUV hoisted up on a lift. The bells on the battered door jingled behind him, and he laid a manila envelope on the counter, then stuck his hands in his pockets, the smell of motor oil, old exhaust, and gasoline familiar in the air.

Harry finished tightening a bolt and came over, cleaning his hands on a rag.

“Hey,” he greeted him. “How’s yuh dad?”

Baelfire snorted. “Like nothing ever happened.”

Harry’s mouth twisted. He shook his head, bemused. “Wasn’ that the fuckin’ surprise of my life. What brings yuh here?”

“We’re leaving,” he said, looking away.

“Because of the bey’ah?”

“Among other things. We’re needed back home. My papa, he wanted me to give you this.” He offered Harry the envelope from the counter. Harry took it with a frown, his fingers smudging the paper with black grease.

“Don’t open it until we’re gone, okay? Papa wouldn’t--” he trailed off awkwardly and scratched the back of his neck, then “--You’ve been a good friend, Harry.”

Harry watched him without speaking. Baelfire knew Harry could be almost gregarious, but there were other times when he went quiet, and made Baelfire wonder what was going through his head.

Harry turned the envelope over in his hands.

“You really ought to put that in the safe,” Baelfire said.

Harry blinked, then went around the counter and crouched behind it. Baelfire heard the buzzing of a dial, then the _clunk_ of bars. The door shut again, rattled, and Harry leaned over the counter, regarding him thoughtfully.

“Ah yuh comin’ back?” he asked.

“Probably not. It’s safer that way. None of us want to risk being separated again.”

“Again?”

“Um… it’s a long story.” He had an idea. “Hey, we’re leaving tomorrow. Can you come see us off?”

Puzzled, Harry assured him, “Wouldn’ miss it for the wou’d.”

Baelfire grinned. “I’ll introduce you to someone who can pass letters for us. But… you have to put them in plastic, keep them dry.”

~

The next morning, frost coating the docks, Harry did a double-take. “Bae, they’s people in the watuh.”

Baelfire laughed. “Come meet Ariel.”

Harry stared at him, then to the women frolicking in the frigid ocean. “Yuh kidding.”

“Nuh-uh.”

~

Amid the noise and chatter, Papa fiddled with the handle of his cane, thumb smoothing over its knotted surface, again and again, the worn deck rolling beneath their feet. 

The cane was one that Baelfire had carved, soon after Neverland.

“You're keeping that?” he asked, curious.

Papa abandoned the railing and turned to him, just as the wide deck listed to starboard. The books had arrived. Baelfire caught him mid-wobble.

Sheepishly, Papa murmured, “It seems I'd better, up to the last.”

He'd been about to add something, but Belle caught his eye, her flutter and fuss, the wind tugging at her skirts. More talk and noise and chatter; their family argued good-naturedly, where and why, how and when.

“But yes,” Papa said softly, “To remind me of the man I became here, and hope to never forget.”

Bright with adventure, Belle stopped to kiss Papa's cheek. More wind, ice in its gusts, and she pressed into his side. Wool and silk, alpaca and merino, the varied textiles his papa delighted in.

The three of them almost blocked the draft, a spot of quiet amid activity, his arm around his papa’s shoulders. Laughter from Ian, Jaime's squeal, the clatter of feet upon the deck.

Morraine passed Evan to him, a thick bundle whose tiny eyes and nose peeked from its depths.

“Did we get everything?” Baelfire asked her. Harry had already left. The others gathered close, excitement in their bearing. Ian had lost his mittens.

She smiled. “I think so.”

He grinned. “We're going home.”

~

Old man Gold had been a lot better off than he’d let on. It took Harry some time to process what he was seeing; he was no lawyer, nor an accountant, for all he’d managed his family’s business since his uncle retired.

A string of curses echoed off the cinderblock walls of the shop.

~

One of the air vents in Rumplestiltskin’s antique Cadillac was cracked, as though someone had shoved a small object through it. Harry found a matching part and replaced it.

When Mrs. Kirk died, Harry passed her unfinished scarf on to Belle through Ariel. After some practice with other pieces, Belle finished the scarf. Her section turned out uneven where Mrs. Kirk’s was not.

~


	23. Chapter 23

They crossed some invisible barrier in the water, and the shoreline of the Enchanted Forest spread out before them, the water sparkling in the morning light. His balance shifted. The constant ache that had been a part of his entire right leg for a century melted away.

“We’re home!” Belle cried, spinning to face him on the deck of the creaky fishing boat.

Voices crowded into his head, unwelcome echoes of a lifetime ago. He froze, afraid of what she would see.

 _Ugly, ugly, ugly_ , they chanted.

Her blue eyes took him in. Her delicate hand came up to touch his face, traced under one eye, tilted his head to see him better in the bright sun.

He knew the irises were too big, his pupils too small. He saw so much more light in this land; they contracted in response to it, lending the appearance, some said, of a lizard.

The pads of her fingers, soft as silk, traced over the curve of one ear. He shuddered, his mouth opening on a gasp.

Her eyes fell to his lips--no his _teeth_. Her thumb tucked under his upper lip, and he closed his eyes in shame. He couldn’t bear to look at her.

 _Ugly, ugly, ugly_ , they cackled. Her thumb invaded his mouth, searching out the crevices. Her fingers spread out over his pebbled cheek, then slid behind his jaw. 

“Rumplestiltskin.”

His eyes opened at her demand. Her skin tasted like chocolate, her thumb intimate between his furthest molars. He bit down gently, scraping her knuckle and pushing it aside to pucker his cheek near his upper canine.

She drew in a sharp breath, her fingers curling around bone and pebbled flesh. She pulled him to her, her thumb still nestled in his mouth, and kissed him.

The voices went silent.

“Mine,” she murmured, drawing back. Her thumb slipped from his mouth, drawing a wet trail up his cheekbone. Her eyes widened.

Her hand fell to his shoulder. “Rumple? What’s happening?”

Dazed, he blinked at her, an odd feeling passing over him.

Drawn by her cry, he heard Baelfire ask, “Papa?”

“Bae, look!” Belle said.

His son’s concerned face swam into view. Rumplestiltskin scrunched his nose; the oddness faded away.

Baelfire appeared stunned. “Papa, it was leaving,” he whispered.

“The curse?”

“What was that?” Belle asked.

The others were coming over, winter gear bundled up in their arms.

“True love,” Rumplestiltskin breathed. “True love can break _any_ curse.”

Belle grinned, dancing and spinning him around with joy, cautiously at first, then faster. “Did you doubt me?”

He slowed her, shook his head. “I doubted _me_ , that I --or any Dark One-- was capable of it, Belle. It shouldn’t be possible.”

“Kiss me again!” she said gleefully.

It took everything he had in him to deny her, hold her at arm’s length. He wanted to kiss her more than anything. “Belle, we can’t,” he rasped, his heart breaking. “My curse… it's the reason we came here.”

He could see her deflate, going from elated to dismayed in the space of a few moments.

She nodded then, and he wrapped her in his arms for comfort. Baelfire’s hand squeezed his shoulder.

“I’ll find a solution, I swear it,” Rumplestiltskin said.

In his ear, for him only, Belle whispered, “We’ll have to find other things to kiss until then.”

He groaned, and muffled it in her hair.

~

They’d barely set foot on shore when they were met by the Blue fairy, who had surely felt the magical disturbance caused by their crossing of the realms. “Why are you here?” she demanded of him, her tiny voice projected eerily into their midst. 

He felt Belle stiffen at his side.

“Go back,” the fairy cried. “Take your evil with you!”

Interfering gnat! A sneer curling his lip, his left hand ignited with deadly flame for the first time in a century. “Can’t do that, dearie.”

This was the same fairy that had endangered his family by sending them all away to the other land--a land where he had no magic to defend them when magical threats came calling.

His son stepped forward then, clasping Rumplestiltskin’s shoulder to calm him.

Reluctantly, he let the flame extinguish.

“You lied to me,” Baelfire accused her.

The fairy fluttered indignantly. “Fairies don’t lie!”

Behind them, Morraine and Wendy helped Ariel to her feet and dried her off, dressing her in a light cotton gown. Her sisters watched from the tideline.

“I found them in Neverland,” Ariel said, joining them. She stood shoulder to shoulder with Belle, who was tucked securely under Rumplestiltskin’s right arm. “How did they get there, then?”

The others came up, Morraine going to Baelfire’s side, Evan in her arms, Wendy and Jaime following. John and Michael shadowed Ariel, Ian clutching John’s hand.

They formed a half-circle around the fairy, Rumplestiltskin at its apex.

“It was a mistake to leave,” Baelfire said, his arms crossing over his chest. Lean and lithe, he would be a formidable opponent in this land. “How many have died in war since then?”

“You’ve been gone a long time,” the fairy said defensively.

Not even Ian nor Jaime fidgeted. The fairy grew agitated under the weight of their combined silence. The watchful gazes of the children seemed to unnerve her the most. These children would never hold her in the awe to which she was accustomed.

Or had been, when he and his family departed this land, so many years ago.

Belle spoke up, “How much dust do you have left?”

The fairy drew back. “What do you know about that?”

“Everyone knows about the dust,” Belle said. “We’ve been hiding in the dwarven caves for nearly a generation now.”

“You’re not from here!”

Belle laughed. It had a strange, bitter, sound. “I was born here,” she replied. “What have you got? Enough for one year? Two? More if you keep it for yourself?”

“Who are you to question me?” the fairy demanded.

Rumplestiltskin wondered how long it had been since anyone dared to question the Blue fairy at all. His vague memories from Dark Ones past suggested that it had been a very long time indeed.

He bristled. “She is my wife,” he snarled.

This time Baelfire made no attempt to calm him, but lifted his chin. “And she is my mother,” he declared. Belle turned to peer around Rumplestiltskin in surprise, her arm winding about his waist. “How many deaths shall we lay at your feet, Rhuel Gorem?”

Her wings buzzed in anger. “We couldn’t do anything! The fairies have never been able to drive ogres away. Our magic has no effect on them, and we can’t kill.”

She must be truly desperate to confess such things, Rumplestiltskin thought. This was worse than they’d imagined.

He held up a hand, the one not wrapped around Belle, and gestured.

The fairy flinched. Then she tilted her head as though listening. Her wings beat the air in quick staccato pulses.

She was going to make him dizzy. He wanted to swat her.

“I’ve only frozen them for now,” he said.

She slowed. She wouldn’t call his bluff; she would never believe it was a bluff.

“We could do as you say. We could go back, take my evil with us.” He said the words in a level tone, despite her flitting about. Belle pressed closer against his side; Baelfire’s hand returned to his shoulder and tightened. They were still here with him; they had not left.

“We could even break my curse. We know how to, now.”

The fairy jerked, her wings fluttering. “That’s not possible!” she cried.

“It is quite possible,” Belle defended him crisply, “and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t speak of my husband that way.”

She did things like this, and she took his breath away; he had to avert his eyes from her. It wouldn’t do to develop an awkward bulge during negotiations like these.

He directed his gaze back to the fairy. Now _there_ was something to quell his urges.

“So why don’t you?” the insipid jellyfish asked in a petulant tone.

“Because you need him,” Baelfire growled. “Or rather, you need him here, both alive and free.”

More outrage followed, abruptly silenced by the appearance of the dagger in Rumplestiltskin's hand.

“We all know what this is,” he said into the quiet. He held it up between them, the side with his name facing her. “Do you have another candidate?”

There was a pause, then a glow, and the Blue fairy stood within their semi-circle, her round face puzzled. “What are you asking me, Dark One?”

The dagger disappeared. He felt like the cat that had got the canary. Something within him purred in satisfaction.

~

In the end they adjourned to Ariel’s home, where she and Eric played witness to their negotiations and eventual agreement.

“How long has it been since we left?” Rumplestiltskin asked, much later, after everyone else had retired for the night. Several thick bundles of parchment lay on the table between them, pens discarded to the side. He was weary as he’d ever been, man or mage.

Rhuel Gorem seemed surprised by the question, but as it was harmless enough, she answered, “Three hundred twenty-one years, sixty days, and three hours.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That long,” he murmured, then, “You’ve got a tear in your... costume, dearie, and you didn’t fix it.”

The fairy looked down at her frilly skirt, flushing. She fingered the material, but refrained from expending the unnecessary magic.

“Rhuel Gorem,” he said, “you’re used to dealing with Dark Ones who never lived more than a few decades after gaining their… position. The young ones, the inexperienced ones--” he tilted his head “--the ones with nothing to drive them. If any harm comes to my family, rest assured that I _will_ make you regret it, one way or another.”

She looked at him with eyes that were far too old, saw too much. “Not if I harm you?” she asked.

“It’s all the same, isn’t it?”

~

“Did you fix it it yet?” Belle asked him the very next morning. They woke in a comfortable room in Eric’s castle, one of the last bastions against the encroaching ogre horde. It was set on one of a series of islands a league out to sea, farmland and orchards surrounding its modest walls. Ogres didn’t swim, after all.

He laughed, and she nipped his chin, her lips perilously close to his. He couldn’t feel the pain of her teeth, only pressure. She didn’t seem to mind the appearance of his.

Inward, he turned his focus, prodded at his magic. He wanted this pain, searched out the threads that barred it from him.

There.

“Well?”

Distractedly, “When would I have done that?” he asked. If only true love’s kiss were as simple as Belle’s marks on him, however temporary they might be. He didn’t need nearly as much sleep here, but he’d been up going over maps and working all night, before crawling in behind her just as the sun began to rise.

“Priorities,” she sighed.

He wrinkled his nose. “Indeed.” Then, “True love is the most powerful magic in any realm. It’s said that it can break any curse. _That_ is what we would be attempting to circumvent.”

“Oh.” Her face fell.

“I will find something, I swear it, though it may take me many years.”

“Finding something….” she said. “How do you go about that, Rumple?”

“I have to learn to use my magic better, I think. It’s strong enough, certainly, but it’s like squishing a spider with an anvil.”

She chewed her lip. “So… books?” she asked hopefully.

He laughed. “Books, yes. You’ll help me?”

She pressed her forehead to his on the pillow, breathing him in. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

He waggled his eyebrows, making her giggle. “I can think of a few things.”

“Oh yes?”

Suddenly sober, he caressed her hair. They would have to cross this bridge at some point.

“I know you’re curious, dearest,” he told her.

Her lovely mouth quirked. “May I?” she asked.

There was something wrong about her asking permission to explore him.

He nodded, drawing her head down to press his lips against her forehead. At least they could still do this.

If they could do this, his lips on her forehead, they might do other things, as she had said. She was clever, his Belle, constantly surprising him.

He’d worn no shirt to bed, only a pair of loose cotton trousers. She skimmed her fingers lightly along his shoulder, finding his scars and tracing them.

He thought perhaps she was pleased to discover those still present. Her shining knight he was not, but sometimes he fancied that she saw him that way.

She found his pulse-point under his chin, her lips brushing softly in the vulnerable spot. He would be forever vulnerable to her if she so desired it.

She nipped at his jaw, teeth and tongue mapping the texture of his skin. Yes, it hurt--and he wanted more. She watched him, just in case she triggered the magic that would defeat their goals in returning to this land. They needed to know where the lines were.

He shivered, his dark-nailed hand beginning his own exploration, plucking at the wide ribbon holding her nightdress modestly closed and untying it.

She sat up in the bed to pull it from under her, squirming delightfully as she drew it away.

He drank in the sight, her breasts perfectly formed, the nipples pert and rosy in the morning sun streaming through their windows.

She saw him watching her and flushed, still tending to shy under his heated gaze after the two weeks they’d been married.

She dove back in, biting at his collarbone and hiding her blushes in his shoulder.

She had teeth like a vixen, his Belle, and she loved to use them. She seldom broke the skin; she’d said she didn’t care for the taste of blood.

He shuddered as she made her way down his chest. She held him down when he arched against her, her lips fastened about his nipple, her mouth opening to scrape the areola with her teeth.

His hips rocked, and she threw a slim leg over him, rolling him and pinning him with her slight weight, his abdomen trapped beneath her, his cock too far behind her to obtain the friction he so desperately craved

He whined, bucked his hips under her, her dampness smearing over him.

“Not yet,” she said distractedly. Her hands rubbed firmly along his ribcage, filling the hollows and examining them.

Why had he thought to let her do this?

“Turn over,” she ordered, rising just enough to allow him to comply within the ‘V’ of her thighs.

He groaned, already missing the contact, but--blessed pressure on his cock at last!

He shoved the pillows aside and tucked his elbows under him, his head hanging down as she began on his neck, shifting his curls and fingering them.

She bit there too, very gently across his spinal cord.

“Mine” she murmured.

His head sagged to rest on the mattress.

One of the pillows went longways beneath him; he tried to frot against it. Belle placed her hands on his shoulders and straddled his back, her thighs spreading and her folds rubbing wetness down the length of his spine. His mottled, scarred, and glossy spine.

He knew how strange he looked here; he could never forget. The morning sun through their windows was merciless, and yet Belle embraced everything he was, brought it forcefully home to him again and again.

With her sex working her juices into the narrowest part of his back, her teeth clamping firmly onto his shoulder.

He gasped into his hands, his hips rolling urgently under her weight. She pressed him down, chased her pleasure and denied him his, her fingers digging into his flesh. He could have easily thrown her off of him, if he so chose, even as the human he’d been.

Magic simmered impatiently under his skin; he forced it away. If Belle wanted to bring herself to orgasm this way, then that is what he would let her do, even as his cock throbbed painfully beneath him, the dark magic threatening to slip from his control.

She stilled at the first sign of unrestrained magic, a sharp wind that tugged at the drapes and blew her hair awry.

He stifled it as soon as it began, his fists clenching, his thick nails cutting into his palms.

He turned his head to find her peering down at him worriedly, her thighs still trembling with her arousal.

“I’m sorry!” he cried, ashamed and miserable. “I couldn’t hold it in.”

Her hand on his cheek soothed him. “Too much?” she asked. 

He sighed, kissed her palm. “Never enough.” _Never enough of you_ , he meant.

He shuddered as she nipped his ear.

“ _Belle_!”

She allowed him to turn over, yanked his trousers down and off, his cock springing up impudently between them, despite his previous distress. She then lined herself up, sinking down onto it eagerly as he arched, baring his throat to her.

There was nothing slow about the way she rode him, nor gentle in the attention she demanded of him. She stifled her cries in his hair, his fingers leaving bruises on her hips.

~

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, when they lay sated on their sides between the sheets. No one would be stirring this early after the night they’d had, so they took the time to just enjoy each other. Any other couple would surely be spending the time snogging leisurely. They’d had to, as she’d put it, ‘find other things to kiss.’

“Uh oh,” he teased.

She swatted his shoulder. “Thank you for that vote of confidence.”

She drew the ribbon from her discarded nightdress, tossing the garment aside. Delicate hands upon his wrists, he let her move them together in front of him and drape the ribbon over them, satin tickling his skin.

His abdomen clenched.

“I’ve been thinking… that it might be possible to improve your control.” 

She was going to kill him. Again. She wrapped the ribbon loosely around his wrists, the bow billowy upon his skin.

Not hemp.

He closed his eyes, arousal spiking within him. She traced the ribbon trapping his hands and leaned up to kiss each eyelid in turn.

“Belle….” 

His magic already rattled the windows in protest. It resented the attempt to contain it, fighting with him. Across the room, he heard glass shatter.

Belle didn’t even twitch, her hand firm on his, holding him.

He heard her steady voice, calming him. “Rein it in, Rumple.”

It took him a few moments, but soon he was able to look at her.

“All right?” she asked.

He nodded.

Her fingers twined with his.

“You’re going to wait, Rumple,” she told him, and he whined. Another pane of glass popped from its frame, tinkled upon the floor.

She paused while he gathered himself, then kissed his fingers.

“This is not to punish you. I’m not angry with you.”

Her words soothed something in him that he hadn’t even identified. He brought her hand up to his mouth, kissed her fingers in return.

She smiled at him. At him!

“I thought we’d start easy, after we’ve worn you out a bit….”

He snorted.

She raised one eyebrow. “No? I suppose there’s a downside to endless energy.”

“There’s a downside to most things in magic,” he said dryly.

She hummed. “So nothing easy, then.”

His chuckle was strained. “Unfortunately, no.”

“Rumplestiltskin.” The ridiculous label his father had stuck him with fell on him like a caress.

He watched her, his belly knotting with apprehension.

“I make this promise to you, my love,” she said, borrowing his phrasing of an eternity ago. “I will not push you past what you can bear.”

He couldn’t look at her when she spoke to him thus.

“Too late,” he grumbled.

She smiled, shook her head. She knew he often groused without real ire. “If you’d like me to stop, tell me ‘stop,’ and that’s the end of it.”

“Truly?” he asked her in a small voice.

She laid her forehead against his.

“Truly. I love you, Rumplestiltskin.”

He was going to die.

But what a glorious way to go.

“I want to know how far this--” she dragged her nails down his mottled, glossy, and pebbled skin “--goes.”

He shuddered, contained the magic, just barely.

“You didn’t get enough before?”

She beamed at him. Her thumbs played over the protrusion of his hips, pressing the flesh into the unyielding bone and following the curve to the softer muscle of his abdomen.

“When have you known me to get enough of you?” she asked, moving lower.

He couldn’t see her over his hands, nor around the bright ribbon she’d tied him with. He raised them up and hooked them behind his head, needing something to pull against.

When she licked him--there. Where her juices and his semen mingled.

 _Pop. Crash_.

His chest heaved; he counted the boards in the ceiling.

This time he put up a wall of magic in front of the window and held it there.

She craned her neck to peer at it. “Can you maintain that?”

Not with the way she would torment him, but--

“It should be the first to go.”

Her approval warmed him.

She used her nightdress to clean the worst of their mess away from him, returning to claim her prize.

He was no prize. He knew this to the bottom of his being, even as her mouth took him in, her blue gaze holding his, demanding, greedy.

She pulled off of him as the wall flickered.

He grunted, then restored it, made it luminous until the bedclothes reflected the purple, visible even while her back was turned to the wall.

She fondled his testicles in her delicate hand, scratched lightly behind the scrotum.

The wall flickered, but held.

Pleased, she rewarded him, just the head between her lips, and began an achingly slow descent.

He trembled; his hips rocked.

Her eyes held his.

Down as far as she could without choking.

She learned quickly, pushed herself for him.

He saw her take a breath, and drive herself down.

The wall fell. She froze.

“Belle...” he whispered, awe and lust tangling within him. She was warm and wet around him, her nose breathing short, shallow puffs into his pubic hair. Her eyes shone with her victory.

He pulled the wall up again by his metaphorical fingernails, pumped it full of magic and ordered it to stay.

She swallowed. It stayed.

She smiled around him. One hand released his hip to gesture, ‘come hither.’

She couldn’t mean... she sucked him, and stroked his hip.

Her eyes glowed with pride.

He thrust, once.

The wall held; she tapped his hip, insistently.

Pride--in him. He thrust into her mouth, and she welcomed him.

She was very, very smug, his Belle. She was his.

His hands pinned behind his head, his thrusts turned short. He came into her mouth.

~

He’d forgotten the wall. It stood, quiescent, before the window.

Every last windowpane behind it was shattered.

He fixed them, and Belle laughed.

“You’re so much easier to read this way,” she informed him, untying his hands.

He wanted to kiss her.

A dribble of his come streaked the corner of her mouth; he settled for swiping it away with a finger, then sticking his finger in his mouth.

She watched him, and his damp finger returned to trace her lips.

She nipped him. “Mine,” she said.

All he could do was nod.

~

When they rose from the bed, she cleaned his chest and back with water from a pitcher on the washstand, but used no soap, and left the scent of her on him. It lingered, and he could smell it the entire day.

~


	24. Chapter 24

They’d packed light, for the most part, except for Belle’s books. Rumplestiltskin said she must have cleaned out Amazon’s entire stock in overnight shipping before they left. Most certainly not, she’d argued. It wouldn’t have fit on the boat.

Belle knew Morraine had brought some of Baelfire’s turned wood pieces, some small mementos from her children, and a baby blanket Jaime had long since abandoned.

Rumplestiltskin cherished a spindle made by his son, a thick stack of letters, and the cup she’d chipped the first day they met.

Their clothing from the other land would seem strange here, in the prosperous areas. Belle knew what was customary, but it wouldn’t matter out in the more desperate parts.

It had been late spring when she’d left here, and it was now just turning into early summer, which was fortunate, as it meant there were fewer layers of warm clothing needed.

They had no wish to burden their hosts. While Ariel and her husband had been most generous with their home, there were ten in Belle’s new family, including herself.

She had a family again! The thought filled her with joy.

While they made ready to go down to breakfast, Belle examined her husband with pleasure. She tilted her head.

“Did you get taller?” she asked, eyeing the heels of his boots.

“A wee bit,” he said, suddenly bashful. “It’s nice, not having to worry about twisting me ankle.”

Or breaking his neck, she thought. Rumplestiltskin, already lanky, cut a fine figure in this land’s garments. She scrutinized the rest of him.

They’d chosen subdued colours to bring with them; the steep poverty brought by war meant that the extravagance they were capable of would be gauche at best.

Dyes were an unimaginable luxury here. Dyes that were available in the land without magic were unheard of. The colour mauve, for example… she’d never seen it in textile before she’d met her husband.

Even the more prosperous areas such as these were hard-hit. From what she’d heard from Baelfire, Ariel and Eric weren’t the type to hole up on their island and ignore events on the mainland. Every resource was stretched to its limit, evident in their home and the town her family had passed through on their way here. Even they, the rulers of their series of island communities, bore the marks of economic strain.

Rumplestiltskin hadn’t packed.

At all.

In the other land he’d favoured silks, soft cottons, and fine wool. Here, a muted brocade waistcoat covered a shirt which appeared to be plain enough, but felt entirely different under her curious touch.

She let him see the hunger in her, smoothing her hands over his shoulders, but then she fingered the lapel of his high collar and frowned.

He trembled at her frown, little shivers that spoke of an unhappy history. She didn’t like what those shivers might mean.

The high collar was a delicious look on him, sharp and dangerous, but dangerous was not what would serve them best here.

Also… she slid her hands inside, along the back of his neck. What she could reach of it.

“This is in my way,” she told him, twining the curls at his nape about her fingers.

His hair no longer fell in loose waves; curls bounced and tumbled when she ran her hands through them, as tightly wound as the man himself at times.

A sugar high, Baelfire had said.

He shuddered but baulked, the defensive set of his shoulders giving him away.

She sighed. “It’s armour, isn’t it?”

Sheepishly, he nodded.

“Not around family,” she admonished him. “Not here.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it. “Are Ariel and Eric family?”

Belle considered that. “I think so,” she said slowly. “I’d like them to be. But Rumple… do you want them to be afraid of you?”

It took a moment, but he shook his head, the curls tugging at her fingers. The rigid material dissolved away, leaving something more like those he’d worn in the other land in its wake.

“Thank you,’ she murmured in approval. “I like this better.”

She nosed into the softer fabric covering his collarbone and continued her exploration, gratified to find bare skin at last, her fingers weaving further into his hair.

“Our hosts are expecting us,” he reminded her. His breath hitched in a way that contradicted him.

She looked up. “I’m not hungry.”

She squealed when Rumplestiltskin wrapped his wiry arms about her waist, swinging her around as if she were light as a child.

“Would you keep me here all day?” he asked.

“You don’t really want me to answer that, do you?”

“Might chafe.” His eyes crinkled at the corners.

Spoilsport.

“Turn around,” she said. “I want to see you.”

She had to let go of him for that. Oh dear.

He obeyed her uncertainly, his head craning over his shoulder to watch her.

Oh yes, she liked this.

She lifted his curls and let them fall through her fingers, the familiar shape of his neck scattered with specks of gold.

She checked the fit of his waistcoat, neatly backed in fine-grained leather, as precise as the best artisan could make. How he accomplished that where most people could not see was anyone’s guess.

Leather clothing was banal enough here, a necessity even, where conventional plate or chainmail produced too much noise to hide from ogres. Boiled leather surfaces were common, if the wearer could afford it.

This was no boiled leather. The trousers were suede, soft and supple and _touchable_ ; they fit him like a second skin. They’d never make it down to breakfast if she had her way.

She smoothed her hands down the sides of his narrow waist, and reluctantly let him go.

“What is that phrase Bae used? ‘Bust a gut.’ He’s going to ‘bust a gut’ when he sees you.”

“He’ll live,” Rumplestiltskin said.

Belle only hoped Baelfire would keep himself relatively discrete.

“You won’t stand out?” she worried. Her husband would always stand out, no matter what he wore.

Rumplestiltskin shrugged. She watched the play of texture over his form. “They expect me to stand out, here.”

~

“Grandpa!” Ian called, when they arrived downstairs. He came barrelling over, ploughing into Rumplestiltskin’s legs with gusto. He’d known better, in the other land.

“Papa said it was okay now!” He frowned, worried. “Is it okay?”

Rumplestiltskin appeared stunned. He knelt on the hard stone to look the little boy in the eye. “Yes, it’s okay, Ian.”

Jaime came up behind Ian, quieter than her brother. “Papa said you can run with us now, Grandpa.”

“Aye, that.” He swallowed. “I can, but I don’t think I can keep up with you.”

Jaime smiled. She knew when her grandfather was having her on.

Ian giggled. “Your eyes are funny,” he said.

Rumplestiltskin tilted his head. “Not scary?” he asked.

Jaime giggled now. “Papa said you might be a little silly, too.”

“Did he now? What else did he say?”

“Morning, Papa,” Baelfire yawned. He looked as though he hadn’t woken up yet. He squinted at them. “You’re holding up breakfast.”

Jaime tugged one of Rumplestiltskin’s curls, letting it go and watching it bounce back.

“What have you been telling my grandchildren, Bae?” He hugged Ian and stood, touching Jaime’s cheek. It was graceful, easy, like something a dancer would do.

“Me?” Baelfire asked innocently. He glanced down. “What in seven hells are you wearing?”

~

“That’s where most of the refugees are,” Eric said after breakfast, pointing to a spot marked on the map before them.

“I know that area,” Rumplestiltskin said. “The dwarves have mined the same mountain range since the beginning.” It was one of the lower peaks, as riddled with tunnels as an anthill.

The large table was covered with parchments from various eras. Eric had even found a few that were hundreds of years old. They were brown with age, and threatened to crumble. Rumplestiltskin made sure they didn’t.

The maps had changed greatly in the time he’d been away, but mountains and valleys, seas and rivers remained mostly unchanged, as did their names.

Belle showed them where her home had been, and where the remains of her father might be.

“At the fork of the two rivers,” she said, pointing out what had once been a bustling port town. The location was in the heart of disputed territory--or it had been, up until last night.

“If there was anything left of anyone to bury, it was too dangerous to go looking.”

Rumplestiltskin nodded. “Belle and I can work this area today,” he told Eric, tapping the fork with a dark-nailed finger.

Eric would have offered them horses, but he didn’t have any. “No one’s bred horses in years,” he said. “Donkeys and oxen for work, yes. We’re islands here; horses are too noisy on the mainland.”

“Horses don’ like magic much,” Rumplestiltskin said.

“When we rebuild...” Eric’s chamberlain put in--

It was “when” now, and Belle could sense the excitement the word brought.

“--we’ll need to find breedin’ stock again.” He indicated a valley not far from the islands. “Here, me’be, there might be some runnen’ wild. My wife’ fam’ly used to raise horses there. No one knows ‘ow anymore.”

“Like Assateague?” Jamie asked.

Morraine smiled proudly at her daughter. “Very like, but I won’t find you taming mares in the middle of the night, will I?”

Ian rose on tiptoe to see the table better. Rumplestiltskin beckoned him over and picked him up, the little boy snuggling into his side, his head laying to rest on his grandfather’s shoulder.

Two days ago, Ian would have been far too heavy for the painful balance the lift required of Rumplestiltskin.

Belle’s heart ached at the sight. The idea of children with Gaston had filled her with trepidation. Rumplestiltskin was quite another matter.

She counted the days, scribbled some numbers in her notebook. It was difficult; it seemed like an eternity ago that she was running for her life through that forest, then finding the tree that brought her to the land without magic.

She wondered, counted the numbers again, kept them meaningless, without notation, just in case someone saw. She was late, but it had happened before. She wanted to be sure before she said anything to anyone. She wouldn’t give Rumplestiltskin false hope; it would devastate him. She knew this as surely as she knew he desired a child with her.

He wanted more than her physical company. Much more.

Out of his line of sight, her hand drifted over her abdomen. Morraine caught the motion and raised an eyebrow.

Belle shook her head. Rumplestiltskin would be able to tell her in an instant, if she asked him, but she couldn’t. There was nothing to do but wait.

He pressed a kiss into Ian’s hair, his eyes closing. Ian giggled and chased his cheek, casually returning the gesture.

Rumplestiltskin froze. He swallowed, then set Ian down, and made that face-scrunching motion he’d used on the boat the day before.

“Grandpa?” Ian asked.

Rumplestiltskin hugged him, smoothed his hair, and walked out of the room.

There was silence.

Belle closed her notebook. Baelfire took Ian and Jaime aside. “You can’t do that,” he told them softly.

She found Rumplestiltskin out in the corridor, leaning against the wall, his head bowed. He looked up at her footsteps, and offered her a watery smile.

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” she said. There were times she missed being able to kiss her husband, so fiercely that it hurt. She settled for reaching up to lay the backs of her fingers against his pebbled cheek.

“I am,” he said. “I thought it was only you. I could have avoided all...” he gestured, encompassing their lives, their history, everything except the reason they’d chosen to return, “...all this.”

His eyes widened suddenly. “Did the Blue fairy know?”

Belle frowned. “Perhaps she didn’t think it possible?”

He deflated. “She didn’, did she?”

They both remembered the Rhuel Gorem’s indignant denial of the viability of true love for Rumplestiltskin, for any Dark One.

He looked down at her, the extra two inches in his boots making him seem much farther away. She wasn’t sure she liked that.

“I haven’ heard th’ voices since we stepped off of tha’ fishin’ boat,” he told her, the downy fabric of his shirt soft against her arm, the warm cream of unbleached linen.

She spotted threads of gold mixed in with the brown of his waistcoat and traced their subtle patterns.

“Did you always hear them?” she asked. The shift of light mesmerized her.

He nodded. “They never left me.”

“Do you think they’ll stay away?”

He’d slipped into the thick brogue she so loved. “Ah dinnae ken.” He pulled her into his embrace, and they remained like that for a long time.

~

_What to Expect When You’re Expecting_

She’d included that one in the crates, along with a slew of other medical texts, but hadn’t thought she would be cracking it open so soon. She hunched over it, listening for the door in case her husband approached. She couldn’t let him catch her.

The door handle squeaked. She shoved the book back into the crate just as the door opened, hoping to still her racing heart.

~


	25. Chapter 25

“We have an advantage, you know,” Belle said, taking Rumplestiltskin's hand to step across a rocky path. The town was deserted, paper windows long since crumbled, their empty gaps staring out at him accusingly.

Most of the thatch had been caved in, daylight rendering shells of the stone walls.

“What’s that?” he asked, scanning their surroundings. His magic told him there were people here. Somewhere.

The high collar was back. It made him feel safer.

It was _in her way_. The words had sent a jolt of arousal through him. His refractory period in this land was practically nonexistent. He was worse than a teenager.

She’d squeezed his hand and forgiven him.

Belle kept her voice low. Most people would be unable to hear her at this volume, no matter how close they might stand.

“No one here has heard from the Dark One in over three hundred years…. Three _hundred_ , Rumple.”

He looked over at her.

“The only reason my family knew about you was because of that brooch. It wasn’t a story we told to many, a few dear friends. It was one of those bits of history about an heirloom which stayed close.”

They approached the town gates, twisted masses of rusted iron and rotting wood. Ruined armour lay in heaps, the flesh they’d covered long since consumed by scavengers. The bones remained.

She hid her face in his shoulder. Grief for those long dead wracked her, and he held her to comfort her, helpless to do aught else.

An abandoned ship listed by the docks. He sent out tendrils to investigate the hull, dislodged it from the river’s bottom and made it sound.

A silent wind drifted through the streets, gathering up the bodies and placing them on the ship.

When Belle looked up to find them gone, he brushed his stained hand over her hair. “I can’t bring back the dead, dearest,” he told her. “Come with me?”

~

Rumplestiltskin lit the pyre from the shore. Attracted by the burning ship, an old woman crept out from the ruins.

“Hello?” she called.

“Olive!” Belle cried. She hitched up her skirts and ran.

Rumplestiltskin followed, warily.

Belle skidded to a halt. “Olive? It _is_ you!” She threw her arms around the crone, hugging her gently. “How?” she asked.

Olive shook her head, smiling toothlessly. “How, little missy? I thought _you_ dead and gone.”

Her hair, dry and brittle with what looked like a rabbit’s rib holding it in place, threatened to fall from its moorings.

She inspected the two of them, stepping closer. “No one has been able to put their dead to rest here in many years.”

Belle nodded, Olive’s weathered hands clasped in hers. “The ogres are gone,” she promised, turning to him.

Olive’s rheumy eyes were clouded with age. She squinted at him. “Who is this, Belle?”

Belle smiled tremulously. She took his hand and placed one of Olive’s in his. “This is my husband, Rumplestiltskin,” she said.

The woman started, but didn’t pull away. “Surely not!”

Belle slid an arm about his waist, keeping her hold on Olive’s other hand.

Olive looked up at him without fear. She was nearly blind. “You’re the one who took Belle’s relative away?”

He shifted. “My son and I, yes.”

“Why are you here?” she asked curiously. Not, ‘How are you here?’

It took him a moment to form a reply. “I’m here for Belle.”

~

The blaring call of a horn would have been suicide, Belle told him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard the sound in this land.

Olive cackled and reeled off a date.

“Oh yes, that,” Belle said, wincing.

Rumplestiltskin conjured one, a copy of another he’d seen many years ago, inlaid with abalone and exotic woods. Where once the instrument was used to rally troops to war, It would now become a symbol of peace.

Belle’s hand closed around it. She lifted it to her lips, and the bold notes sang out over the wide river, carried on its rippling surface.

Again and again, so there could be no mistaking the sound.

Within its immediate range, a hundred refuges froze, the chill of the grave stealing over their hearts with cold, clammy fingers.

Out in the hills, a former stableboy stiffened, his scarred hand seeking that of his wife’s. She clung to him, the third in their number stringing his bow in haste.

Fear gripped a hundred throats, and they waited to hear the pounding of ogre feet, the magnitude of which shook the ground they trod.

The bow was the heaviest Robin could draw, not the light one which put food on their table. He peeled a small boy from his leg and passed him to Daniel.

~

The sound of the ram’s horn carried.

Leagues away, in the dwarven mines, a shepherd prepared to herd his flock of goats from the caves. The creatures who climbed the high places, the sheer cliffs no other could scale, bleated restlessly.

He and his twin brother exchanged a puzzled glance.

A brunette, her hair as dark as ebony, paled past her normal ivory shade. Lips as red as blood opened on a gasp. She held her daughter close.

~

Belle lowered the horn, leaned back against him. “Now what?” she asked.

“Now we wait.”

Every living human knew better than to make a noise like that. The type of horn he’d copied for her and the others hadn’t existed in this land for quite some time. They’d all been destroyed. Most of the sheep had been eaten, by one side or the other. A very few remained in Eric’s island kingdom, just enough to maintain the breeding lines. Because someday, they had hoped, the ogres might die off.

Morraine and Baelfire had one horn, the three Darlings another, and Eric and Ariel another, all in the farthest corners of the land.

Olive had gone in search of her neighbours.

“Why was that brooch special, Rumple?” Belle asked him. “Why did you give it to Morrie’s mother?”

Rumplestiltskin was quiet, considering his answer. “Dark magic does not create,” he said at last. “It kills, it destroys, it steals, it transforms or alters--it even copies, like this--” he touched the horn she held “--but it does not create.

“It is utterly incapable of producing anything of beauty.”

“The brooch?”

“An accident. An experiment, if you will. I wanted to show Bae that magic wasn’t all bad, but I couldn’t do it. I had this much power--”

He made one of those flamboyant gestures he’d acquired, self-mocking, then wrapped his arms back around her waist.

She leant her head against his shoulder.

“--for nothing. I’ve never had to… it’s never been difficult. Containing it, yes, but using it?” He shook his head, knowing she’d feel the motion.

“Many mages’ first act of magic occurs when they are truly desperate. I wanted my son to be proud of me more than anything. Imagine my surprise when the magic that I used turned out to be light magic. The previous Dark Ones, their memories, they never hinted about those limits. They hid it from me. It’s part of the curse, that you don’t find out how terrible it is until you are well and truly mired in it.”

“How much do you remember?” she asked.

“Physical things, what they saw and heard, no thoughts. The memories become distant with time like anyone else’s, but they don’t lose details.”

Any details, especially not the ones he would rather they did. They kept him awake at night.

“Belle, when my curse is taken on by another, they will inherit my memories of you.”

She didn’t like that one bit. “I don’t share, Rumple.”

His lips drifted over her temple. “No more do I, but… it may be inevitable. I don’t want to live forever without you, Belle.”

She swallowed. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”

She picked up one of his hands from around her waist, examining it. Then thoughtfully, “We are building something, I think. Every Dark One after you will know what is possible. They will know that you can love and be loved, and that you are needed.”

He nodded. “We will never forget,” he whispered. “Even if everyone else does,”

She craned her head up and grinned at him. “So let's make those memories spectacular.”

He laughed, relieved she wasn’t angry with him. “Scandalize them?”

“Traumatize them in the worst way.”

“I don’t have to warn them about those, do I?”

Her shoulders shook. He held her tighter.

“This means I won’t be able to choose a successor who is in any way related to me.”

She wrinkled her nose, resting contentedly against him. “That does rule out the people we know best.”

He sobered. “I wouldn’t want to ask this of someone I care about.”

“Rumple, you can’t help but care about people you like. I don’t see you picking someone to succeed you that you detested. You’ve put far too much into this to do otherwise.”

He sighed.

She shifted, and led him over to a bit of rubble, sitting with him upon it.

“What if you were to learn to use light magic?”

“Dark Ones do not use light magic,” he replied, but his tone was less than certain.

“Don’t they?” Belle asked. “Didn’t you?”

He stared off over the water.

“Could I?” he asked.

She had no answer for that.

After a time, he said, “When the first Dark One was made, her appearance did not change. It was only after she killed a man with her magic that....”

Her lover rejected her. He could still feel the vicarious pain of that rejection, so many years ago, because it had been so deep as to cause a physical ache in her. She hid it from her lover well, but it had hurt.

“Since then, every new Dark One has had to kill for the curse to pass on. I killed countless sentient beings--the ogres--immediately after obtaining my power. My son thought me a monster.”

“He did not.”

Rumplestiltskin chose not to argue with her. She would believe what she wanted of the people dearest to her, and woe betide any who objected. She’d defended him the same way, however least he deserved it.

“I think it’s time again,” he said.

~

At the edge of human hearing, a woman emerged from her hiding place, listening. Her pursuers had mysteriously frozen the night before, leaving her to escape.

That way, that direction.

~

“What is going on?” Snow asked.

Within the sound of the horn’s call, everyone had expected the one who’d blown it to die, and wondered why the bearer had been so foolish, but none lifted a finger to help.

They wouldn’t or couldn’t. It was all the same.

A sound like that would have drawn ogres from leagues around… which meant that the ogres would be moving _away_ from Snow and her growing family.

James stood. “I’ll go look,” he said.

David nodded. “Best get the herd out anyway. You’ll be all right?” he asked her.

An anxious glance toward the cave’s mouth, and she turned to them. “I’ll be fine,” she said. Goodbyes took longer when there were three of them, but it had become their habit. One never knew when one might not return.

~

Red met the two not far from the cave. “There’s none in sight,” she said, vibrant with energy.

“What do you mean, none?”

“Come see, come see!”

She led them to her lookout perch, a narrow craig in the mountain. A battered telescope lodged in a crack; she pulled it free.

James took it first, focusing it where she pointed, the last known location of the ogres’ nest.

It was deserted, but unlike previous abandoned camps, a half-eaten bear carcass still occupied the centre.

Ogres were carnivores; they hunted an area, then moved on when there was nothing more to be had.

“They never leave food behind,” he said, passing the scope to his brother.

~

It took half the day for the refugees within range to make their way to their respective groups, those that would come. Many sent representatives, left their families in hiding.

Some would not come at all.

A lithe man and woman, lupine in their movements, raised the fine hairs on the back of Rumplestiltskin's neck. She was tall and narrow, elbows and angles and dark locks, he shorter and stocky, wary of strangers. They communicated with each other in eerie coordination, stronger together.

The two wolves knew a pair of brothers who could raise sheep.

Rumplestiltskin looked between them, bemused. ‘Red’ grinned, comfortable in her own skin. He sent them on to Belle.

He’d known his wife had been raised to run an estate; now he was treated to the evidence of that training. She drew people out, made lists upon lists, gathered information, their trades, their general locations, what they needed.

She found a man who knew a couple that Sebastian’s wife would dearly love to meet. The care of horses was another of the many trades that had nearly fallen into obsolescence.

His first instinct was to hide in the shadows, but she kept him busy coordinating the lot. “Never thought I’d be a ferryman,” he grumbled, hours later.

He’d never been in the public eye so much. It unnerved him, the stares, the whispers. Then Belle had touched his lower back, a fleeting, subtle thing, and the smell of her that he’d shoved to the back of his mind came roaring to the fore, leaving him breathless.

No one else knew what that touch meant. She’d continued chatting with the woman in front of them.

His wife had rubbed her juices there.

“Are we done for today?” Belle asked, hopefully.

Her throat rasped from talking, and he knew she wanted to be away.

He nodded, held out his hand to her. “I’d like to show you something.”

~


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possible trigger warning for anyone with a phobia for heights, just skip this chapter, okay? It’s a little graphic about them. I’ve included a short plot summary at the end of this chapter so you won’t get lost.

It was glorious up here, clear and cool. The weariness of the day seemed to leave her, a fierce mountain breeze tossing at her skirts, her body at rest within Rumplestiltskin’s firm embrace.

“What’s that?” she asked.

They stood under a pristine white pavilion, securely perched atop the highest mountain peak as far as the eye could see. The pavilion had not existed an hour ago, yet the stone beneath her feet possessed the look of something that had been extant for generations.

A sturdy railing guarded her from falling. There was no break in its circumference, no stairs to descend. It was a long way down; her knees went weak at the height. She leaned into Rumplestiltskin, pulling his arms tightly about her waist. Every natural urge within her wanted to crawl to the centre of the pavilion, crouch down to the stone until she could no longer see the ground so far below.

“Hmm?” his query rumbled against her back, sounding distracted. She knew why; she could feel it against her rear, and it thrilled her.

“That,” she said, pointing again. Her curiosity had got the better of her.

Wind whipped at her sleeve, unbuffered by landscape. He followed the line of her arm. Nestled between mountain craigs were the ruins of stone walls, long abandoned. His sight was better than hers, was better than that of any man living.

“It used to be a castle,” he told her, his warm breath tickling at her ear. “Quite a large estate, really. Most don’t have that sort of space within the walls. They keep the infrastructure outside.”

She nodded, familiar with the custom. Walls were expensive to build; the blacksmith, the baker, the tanner, the mill, all set up shop in villages around a castle, seldom inside. The walls were used for defense; the villagers taking refuge within when necessary.

“There’s even an orchard in there,” he said. His hand smoothed over her abdomen, and she tried not to twitch. It wouldn’t do to give anything away. “Or there was once. Those are peach leaves.”

She didn’t ask why it was abandoned; ogres were the answer to nearly every heartbreaking question in this land.

“Do you want to look, later?” he asked.

She nodded, but--

“Why did you bring me up here?”

He chuckled against her, his hand moving lower. “The view is exquisite.” He wasn’t speaking of the mountains. She knew this like she knew the planes of his body. She arched into his hand, letting her head fall back onto his shoulder, rich with brocade over wiry strength. “Rumplestiltskin.”

His full name from her never failed to give him pause. She felt him waiting. “Don’t tease me,” she begged.

“Already?” he asked, careful with her. He was always careful with her.

He guided her a short step forward. Her muscles tensed without her conscious permission, the stone no longer visible beneath her feet.

“Shall I cover your eyes?” he offered, his lips on her shoulder.

She shook her head, enjoying the fear and the overwhelming tremble in her knees, the safety of his arms. He kept her safe; the height made her heart race. She savoured it.

He was patient with her. Her hips pressing into the thick railing, he lowered her an increment at a time, until her weight rested entirely upon it, his erection pushing against her.

She had a moment’s anxiety for the new life which might grow within her, but remembered what she’d read before they left. At this stage, a baby would be smaller than a pea, and safely cradled within her womb.

Not for much longer. Today she relished the pressure, the affirmation of his presence. The mountains spread out below them, jagged and unrelenting in the far distance. She refused to close her eyes.

She knew she wouldn’t fall, knew it like she knew his changed body, solid behind her, his hands on her hips, keeping her from tumbling to the earth far below.

Nevertheless….

If they became a little unfocused, no one but her would know.

She shivered as he hitched up her skirt, untying her drawers one side at a time and allowing them to fall to the ground.

Falling….

Her mouth was dry as bone, her thighs quivering. The greenery below was hazy with atmosphere, so much of it that it clouded the details of the farthest valleys. She squeaked when he explored her, his short, thick nails filed smooth.

She heard the _thrip_ ing sound of his laces coming undone, his hot, bare flesh freed to rest against hers. She shuddered, the mountains beginning to swim before her eyes. The wind stung them, made them tear. Her body could only maintain the fear for so long, surely.

“Please,” she gasped, craving the distraction, needing _him_.

He parted her folds and drove into her, filling her. She clutched at the railing, his arms crossing over her chest, his forearms strong between her breasts, his fingers digging into her shoulders.

The next thrust, and she felt her toes leave the ground. “Rumple!”

She’d forgotten the ground; she’d forgotten the stone beneath them. His thrusts threw her up against his hands, his breathing growing ragged.

One finger at a time, she released her death-grip on the railing and let him hold her. She knew how the heaviest birds flew, anchored steadily on wings that climbed the strongest currents of air.

Safe.

His cock rubbed over something different now, bludgeoning it as she throbbed, her sex beginning to clench around him. One hand released her shoulder to fight with her skirts, finding her outer flesh and trapping it between his palm and his cock.

Orgasm crashed over her; she felt it rip from her throat in a way she never allowed it to in more populated areas. It disappeared into the wind, carried and buffered and lost.

No one but him heard her, or attributed it to the woman in the high pavilion, too distant to see.

~

They left the pavilion where it was, permanently anchored to the rock of the highest mountain, unreachable by human means of travel.

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot summary: Belle and Rumplestiltskin spend some time high up on a mountain. They spot the ruins of what would have been the Dark Castle and decide to investigate… later.


	27. Chapter 27

The walls were a complete ruin. Little remained of the original structure but an outline of the ground floor, its dimensions helpfully laid out, and beneath that….

“Dungeons?” Belle asked in disbelief. “Rumple, why?”

“I’ve got to defend us, haven’t I?”

She threw up her hands. “Will you put _me_ in a dungeon?

Mischief lit his eyes, and she caught her breath. He was so different here, and yet so much the same. Magic in the air he breathed, something wild and untameable, volatile and dangerous.

He was hers by choice, she his to guard. Today his plaything, and he hers.

“I could,” he said, prowling closer. “You see, I was verra, verra angry when you tried to break my curse--”

She’d done no such thing.

“--because--” his voice dropped in pitch “--true love may touch our lives once, but never monsters like me.”

Her mouth opened to object. He placed his hand over her lips. “It’s just a game,” he soothed her “...and so I dragged you down here, threw you into a cell.”

With a flourish, the ancient stone was scoured, the rotting doors repaired. She swore she saw rodent bones rolling away like tumbleweeds.

He opened the heavy door for her and swept into a bow, one eyebrow raised in playful invitation.

She responded with a curtsey and obligingly stepped inside, her belly tightening with anticipation. She turned on her heel as he shut the door behind her, sliding the bolt home. It made a coarse grinding noise, trapping her inside Rumplestiltskin’s dungeon.

There was a tiny window in the top of the door, just a little too high for her. He opened it and peered inside, smirking.

“Stormed off in huff, did you?” she demanded tartly.

“Had to cool off.” His eyes danced, rich gold in the dim light.

“Did you leave me to rot?’

“Only for a few hours.”

She quailed; she wanted him back on her side of that door where she could touch him. “You’d better not.”

Suddenly uncertain, he disappeared from the window. The door opened outward, and he stalked inside, lithe grace and gold-veined brocade, an air of resigned defeat about him.

She took a step back and to the side, just to watch him follow her. “What are you going to do to me?” she quavered. She tried not to giggle.

He leaned in, his breath hot on her lips.

“Go,” he pointed adamantly in the direction of the door.

Confused by this turn of events, she repeated, “Go?”

He pivoted away from her with a careless shrug, as if he were dismissing the help, his hands folding before him. “I don’t want…” he trailed off, unable to finish. His shoulders hunched, and he turned back to her wretchedly, their game broken.

“I--I’m sorry,” he stuttered, his hands pale about the knuckles, twisting together in consternation. “I can’t say that, even in jest.” His eyes, their pupils almost normal-sized (for a human, in daylight), pleaded with her.

She touched his cheek, finely pebbled. Her thumb swept under one eye in a caress; the delicate skin there fluttered.

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” she comforted him. “Absolutely nothing.”

She turned him gently by the waist, around to where he’d been.

The back of his waistcoat was faced in supple leather, his shoulders tense under the layers. She smoothed her hands over them, felt him relax the muscles there.

She didn’t allow herself time to admire him then, but sidestepped him and marched out of the cell, her hips sashaying outrageously.

She went no more than a few steps from the door, the hard soles of her shoes knocking firmly on the stone, and stopped.

She took a deep breath to steel herself, and stormed right back in. He looked as though he hadn’t moved a muscle. She knew better.

She jabbed a finger into his chest.

“You were freeing yourself,” she said savagely, but her smile fond. “You could have had happiness if you _just_ believed that someone could want you...”

She knew him, knew him like no other, knew his fears, his insecurities, just as he knew hers. 

“...but you couldn’t take the chance.”

He’d taken the chance all right. He sneered, his lip curling magnificently. “That’s a lie,” he growled, all righteous offense.

And oh yes, how it was! She stepped into his space, slid her hand along the side of his ribcage, under his arm and over his shoulder from behind, grasping it firmly. He shuddered at her touch, his head bowing. She wrapped her other arm around his neck, pulling him down to her, her front pressing up against his.

Even through the thick fabric of his clothing, she knew where each scar lived, the physical and the metaphorical. Her fingers spread to fit between the marks of the bear’s claws.

“You’re a coward, Rumplestiltskin.” Her fingers dug into his shoulder, reminding him of their origin, making a mockery of the cruel words. “And no matter how thick you make your skin, that doesn’t change.”

“I’m not a coward, dearie,” he whispered, the second ‘r’ rolling into a mincing ‘t.’ 

He never called her ‘dearie.’

“It’s quite simple, really,” he continued, his tone becoming strained. “My power means more to me….”

She dared him… and he couldn’t finish that one either. _Spoilsport_ , he seemed to laugh at her.

She grinned at him smugly, her joy spilling over. “No. No, it doesn’t,” she said confidently. “You just don’t think I can love you.”

The words made his eyes sparkle, and she wondered how anyone could have ever called him ‘ugly.’

“Now you’ve made your choice,” she said bitingly… she was losing the thread of their game, “and you’re going to regret it. Forever. All you’ll have, is an empty heart, and a chipped cup.”

She was sure this was the part where she walked out, but where was the fun in that? His cock was hard against her abdomen now, and she wanted it. She wanted him.

He shivered, his forehead leaning into hers. “I feel as though someone just walked over my grave,” he whispered. 

She nodded. “It was fun, though.”

“You are glorious when you are angry, do you know that? Or merely pretending to be angry.”

She blushed. “Is that why you test me so?”

“Me? Never.”

“More than anyone,” she said affectionately.

~

They had no bedroom yet, but at a gesture from Rumplestiltskin the floor of the dungeon became soft, and covered with blankets. She thought perhaps one of them might be the same from Eric’s castle.

It smelled like her husband. She crawled over the blankets and drew him closer.

“I liked that, what you did today up there,” she confessed, beginning to divest him of his clothing. She never would have dreamed there was so much to learn.

She could work buttons now without ruining anything. Usually.

She grinned. “We’re keeping the dungeons, by the way.”

He laughed. “Are you going to lock me in next?”

He sounded like he was only jesting, but… she examined him, that sideways look he employed on occasion.

“If you like,” she said.

His breath hitched.

Oh yes, her husband meant that. She got the cuffs of his sleeves undone, pulled the shirt over his head.

“We will need regular lessons--” she shrugged off her bodice, wiggled out of her skirt, “--to better control your magic.”

She looked up, unsurprised to see iron rings set into the stone, new as the day they were forged.

He followed her gaze, only his guilty swallow convincing her that he hadn’t just added them.

“What poor fool were you going to chain to those?”

His gaze darted away.

She huffed. “You have a distinctly bloodthirsty sense of justice, my husband.”

His mouth quirked, not at all repentant. He watched her undo his trousers, and didn’t help. She’d got halfway through before her impatience got the better of her, and she looked up.

He was smirking.

She wanted to kiss him. Those brown irises were now grey-gold, darker in the dimness of the dungeon than elsewhere. That streak still lit his temple, travelled along his curls, and framed the laugh-lines around his eyes.

The remainder of their clothing disappeared.

She growled and bit him, bowled him over and fisted his cock, her forearm resting her weight across his chest. It didn’t matter if he came early anymore; it was she who could no longer keep up with him.

~

“A ballroom?” he asked, much later. “Why?”

“No one’s had use for anything of the sort in too long, Rumple, and those that did, they weren’t anyone I’d want to associate with.”

“You want me… to throw a ball.”

“Not _a_ ball, Rumple. Balls. Someday.”

She led him out into bright afternoon sunlight, the new stone of their ground floor smooth beneath her feet. She liked the way the heels of his boots sounded against the surface, firm and masculine to her ears.

“You’re quite a good dancer, as I recall,” she said, letting go of him to curtsey, her plain everyday dress drab for what she had in mind.

“Dance with me,” she requested.

The fabric changed under her hands; he bowed in return, a dashing figure in decadent colours and gold buttons.

Belle's gown was now butter yellow, and slipped from her fingers to spill around her in lush waves.

Music began to play. She looked for its source, to find naught but open sky above her and gold-veined marble below.

 _I think he lived with his foot like that for so long that being able to move normally was something he revelled in,_ Baelfire had told her. _That’s something he gave up, again, when he came here with us._

In the other land Rumplestiltskin had been a cautious dancer. Here he threw caution to the wind, and whirled her about the floor. She couldn’t recall ever having so much fun when she’d danced as a child.

Some of the steps she didn’t know, but she followed him as best she could. It was true, then, that the right partner made such things easy.

The music slowed, and so did they, her arms about his neck. Her breath came fast, but not his. It was as though he’d merely been out for a stroll.

Here in the set was where any other couple would kiss, and she ached with the loss.

She placed her hand upon his lips, then hers.

“I _will_ find a way,” he promised her.

She nodded. “I know.”

~

They found an ancient oak on the eastern side of the grounds, its roots exposed by erosion. It reminded her of another oak, in the other land.

He looked where she looked, and asked her, “Do you remember, not so long ago, you said you wanted to tie me to the tree near our home?”

It had been a week ago. She tilted her head, watching him. “I said I wanted to keep you there for hours.”

His smile was shy, with a hint of mischief. She followed the line of his gaze. His flicked back to hers, grey-gold in the dappled sun.

“In summer, if I recall correctly,” he said. The tree had changed, in the moments she found a more interesting subject for her attention.

“There’s nothing wrong with your memory, sir.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled with pleasure.

~

The yellow gown was much the worse for wear by the time she wiggled out of it next to a pond, his teeth tugging at the stays of its bodice.

His shirt hung in muddy tatters about him, his open trousers ruined. The resplendent jacket was nowhere to be found. Between lavish smears, spots of purest white still shone in the silk cravat that bound his arms behind him, brilliant against his mottled skin. He glittered in the fading sunlight, a fine dusting of gold displayed in patches under the dull mud.

Earth between her toes, sun-warmed, the aromas of verdant growth and potent life surrounding the two of them, she let the gown pool about her knees, billow around her ankles, her chemise pulling loose from it, the hem fluttering at her thighs.

Her drawers were long gone, abandoned by the oak.

A handful of mud, she painted his cheeks, down the sides of his neck and over his shoulders, pushing the remainder of his shirt aside, down his arms, the tails hanging from his bindings and draping along the ground.

Earth beneath her bare knees, another handful in the hollow of his throat, ground into his chest, over his nipples, and down his ribs. More, coarser, the larger grains scraping him until he squirmed.

And another, streaked down his stomach, spread in a broad stripe, caked in the curls. Over his cock, coating it, grit and damp, dense and grime, captive in her hand.

He was hard again, his mouth half-open. She scooped up his balls and held them too, thumb and forefinger circled around the whole of him.

An arm under his protruding ribs, she guided him upward by his cock. His balance unhindered, she tucked her shoulder under his. He leaned into her, followed her into the shallows of the pond.

Clouds stirred in the clear water at their feet; its first touch made her shiver, their toes curling into the soft bank. He kissed her cheek, nuzzled into her hair, found his come dried there and breathed in their combined scents.

The mud on his cheeks transferred onto her; she giggled, and he rubbed it into her hair, too.

She squeezed him, his bare ribs gasping in the cradle of her arm, and peeled his trousers down his legs, tossed them onto the shore.

Deeper, until the water caught the edges of her chemise, plastered it to her where it rippled away. His eyes followed the line of it, each ripple bringing the transparency higher, floating free and clinging down.

She let her knees buckle and dropped under the water. Ah! It was cold all at once. She scrubbed the smeared mud out of her hair, but his come stuck there, stickier than before she’d got it wet. The chemise clung to her when she emerged, her nipples painfully tight.

He grinned, his eyes sparkling. The opacity that had concealed her was gone, the fabric soaked. She laughed, wrapped her hand around him and led him further in.

Cool water splashed at his testicles; he hissed. She stroked him, washed the mud from him, cupped handfuls of water, over his shoulders; wet fingers, palms, over his cheeks. It would take forever this way, but not long enough.

She’d brought no soap; that wasn’t the point.

Again and again, and he watched her. Wet fingers, palms, over his cheeks. The splashes echoed along the surface of the pond. Water dripped down her body, the damp fabric less clinging than before.

A flicker of mischief; he darted forward, rubbed his muddy cheek in her hair. He was warm, the wet shirt that hung from his arms trailing in the water. She held him, mud covering her front.

Then she ducked under the water, shook the grit from her hair.

He was ever so smug; his gaze devoured her, greedy. Only two days and she missed him, the way he’d looked when she’d met him. How was she supposed to endure a lifetime without seeing him ever again?

Wet fingers, palms, over his cheeks. He’d got mud in his hair, more clinging than the mud on his skin. She swiped at it, but it was quite stuck.

He bent his head, his lips at her temple. His damp cheek curved when she kept his muddy hair from her.

Deeper into the water, his cock in her loose hold. It would be awkward, given their disparity in height, but if he leant back she could wash the mud from him.

She never got around to asking this of him.

Golden eyes locked with hers, he sunk below the surface, closed them against the debris. His hair streamed out from him, mud breaking into lazy clouds. White silk floated behind him in the current, his knees spread wide.

She lost seconds to stunned immobility. The stones scattered underfoot were kin to those on the bank, yet in their saturated environment they outshone their cousins. The last of the sun through branches now light, now dark, now light again revealed a palette of colour that she had not been wise enough to see before.

Recovering her senses, she scrubbed his hair, enjoying the caress of it on her skin, the press of his head into her hands. When bubbles began to escape his mouth, she coaxed him back up to her, her fingers under his jaw.

She wanted to kiss him; she wiped the water from his eyes.

“I love you,” she said.

He rubbed his cheek into her hair.

~

They didn’t get to come back to the ruins for several weeks. There was too much to be done.

Sebastian, the chamberlain, took a party out to the valley he’d indicated, and there he would have liked to stay, but he was needed, Ariel said. Others would establish the area, Michael among them.

Jaime begged to go.

Morraine argued that horses would be the last step in the settlement process, not the first.

Later, Sebastian brought the couple to meet his wife, who disagreed.

“We can’t wait,” she said, watching Jaime chatter with Ian over her books. “Horses take time, years of time. The first round, they won’t be useful for much, breeding stock only.” She was direct. “Your daughter is nearly the ideal age for an apprenticeship in most trades.”

“She’s nine!” Morraine said, earning a bland look from the woman.

“Ideal,” she repeated.

“She’s right,” Baelfire said, “and Jaime would be over the moon, Morrie.”

He looked around the busy room. “We need to get out there, put down roots. The spotlight is dangerous for Papa.”

Morraine nodded slowly. She smiled. “Do you want to tell her, or shall I?”

~

Rumplestiltskin wanted to be away building their home. Eric and Ariel insisted that they stay. There was too much to do, they said.

The cellars remained stocked with root vegetables that no one ever saw depleting, the rafters decked with smoked meats.

Inland, the fruit-bearing trees were free of pests, and birds avoided their branches.

Grain crops were unheard of here. They required land, lots of it, but Eric had maintained enough for seed.

It would be years before the seed grain could be eaten, but somehow there was more of it in store than Sebastian’s records indicated.

~

When Belle woke one morning unable to keep anything down, or stomach aught but bread, Morraine said it was time.

Rumplestiltskin was worried. He fretted about her. By mid-morning, he pleaded with her to let him do anything. Anything at all.

Belle refused. He didn’t know. Her books said that her body protected her vulnerable baby from the most minor of poisons this way.

She bolted for the chamberpot, again.

“Belle, please,” he begged, kneeling on the floor next to her. His trousers were spotted, and he held her hair from her face.

She saw his hand glow with magic. She snatched it from her, cringed at the hurt that shone in his eyes.

She couldn’t let this stand. Morraine was right. Belle slumped into him, found comfort in his arms.

He banished the stink and she sighed, burrowing closer. He was warm, and he smelled good.

Her hand shaking from the heaving, she reached up, touching first his lips, then hers.

She needed to clean her teeth.

Desperately.

She told him so.

~

He hadn’t gone far, pacing the corridor and working himself into a state.

She drew him over to a window where the light was better, then wordlessly took his hand, uncurled it, and laid it on her belly.

She’d never seen his eyes so wide, nor so lovely. His mouth trembled, and he closed them, tears leaking out around the lashes.

Her thumb brushed under his eye, gathering the salty moisture there. He kissed it from her hand, wet eyelashes clumping as his breath shuddered over her skin.

Joyful despite the weakness that tugged at her body, she cupped his face, stored up the memory, treasuring it and locking it away.

Darker days would come, as they came for everyone, and she would have this.

“I wanted to be sure,” she said.

His hand had never moved from where she’d placed it. She covered it with hers, encouraging.

He looked to her for permission and sent his magic into her.

It was cold, and she lurched, something terrible clutching at her heart.

“Rumple, stop!”

He drew back from her instantly, alarmed. “Belle?”

Frightened, she looked up at him. “I don’t think it’s safe to use this magic in people, Rumple.”

She could see the hurt her words inflicted, but also the understanding.

“I would never do anything to harm you or our child, Belle.”

Our child.

She pulled him back to her, raised his hand and kissed his fingers. Only then did his tense muscles relax.

He was so easily worried when he thought her unhappy with him. Were she an evil woman, she might take cruel advantage of that.

He tilted his head, their hands close between them. “What if I were to test something from you that never touched you?”

“Like what?”

He grimaced. “Blood, usually, or….” His hips pressing into hers, he glanced down, and she blushed.

There was work to be done today, she told him tartly.

The corners of his eyes crinkled, and he shook his head. “Blood it is,” he said reluctantly.

He produced a tiny knife, razor sharp, and carefully nicked her thumb.

She sucked in her breath, tried not to let it show.

He saw. He always saw.

She squeezed his hand in reassurance.

The knife disappeared, and he smeared her blood onto his fingers. There was a tiny puff of purple smoke, and it was gone as well.

“Girl,” he said wonderingly.

Her thumb still ached, and she rubbed it, hoping to make the minor pain go away.

He took her thumb and placed it between his lips, his tongue massaging the cut.

They had work to do today, she reprimanded the flash of arousal which responded to him.

His nostrils flared, and she was hit with the sudden realization that he could smell her. Why hadn’t he smelled the hormonal change her books said was happening to her?

When she asked him, he shook his head, releasing her briefly to reply, “There was something, but it’s been like that since we arrived, and I didn’t know what it was.”

Then he reclaimed her thumb. Like that day on the boat, she slid it between his molars, her fingers curling around his jaw posessively. It couldn’t have been comfortable, but he seemed to like it. As if his legs could no longer hold him, he sunk to his knees before her, her thumb tucked inside his cheek, and rested his head against her abdomen.

He was hers, and it thrilled her.

She raked her nails through his curls, holding him to her.

Down the corridor a door opened, and she looked up to see Baelfire pause, concerned.

Rumplestiltskin opened one red-rimmed eye to search out his son. He smiled sleepily, her thumb still deep in his mouth.

Baelfire left them alone.

~


	28. Chapter 28

When at last they got away from the bustle of activity that Eric’s castle had become, Rumplestiltskin took Belle to the ruins between the mountains for the day.

They explored the perimeter of the outer walls, then sought shelter from rain in the dungeons, the same cell they’d used before, lined the floor with blankets and took the time to dream.

She asked him what he thought of building the rest of their home with light magic.

He didn’t want to disappoint her, but they hadn’t made any progress in that area whatsoever. Not since the brooch.

“Does the dark magic harm you?” she wanted to know.

“The magic itself? No. The things it is used for? Yes.”

He sighed, and sat up. She watched him from the blankets, her hand keeping contact with his knee.

He braced himself, and reached into his chest.

“Rumple, what?!” Belle bolted upright.

His heart was a red, pulsing thing, with streaks of black like ink marring it. The streaks were more numerous than they had been, the last time he’d seen it.

He placed it in her hands. “Don’t squeeze,” he cautioned her.

She paled, looking down at it. He could feel her fingers pass over its surface.

“What are those?” she asked, gently tracing the dark lines. He shivered, and laid down again, his head in her lap.

He didn’t want to tell her, but he must. “Evil destroys, Belle. It leaves a mark, and when that mark grows large enough, there is nothing left of a person, any person. For someone with as much power as the Dark One, it is especially dangerous.”

She held it against her cheek, her skin caressing him. He reached up to place his hand upon her lips, a warning.

She nodded.

“Only one of us has ever lived long enough to let it take over. We tend to get ourselves killed first, one way or another.”

He wouldn’t tell her about the suicides.

“Those memories?” she asked.

“Yes.

“When I became the Dark One, I thought I had to carry the dagger everywhere to use my magic. It’s a common assumption, and one that makes us vulnerable, like carrying your heart around where everyone can see it.”

She looked down at his heart in her hand and trembled. “Put it back, please.”

He smiled. “You do it.”

“How?”

“Just…” he took her hand and guided it. Its weight upon her fingers when she turned her hand left indentations where it lay. Breathing became difficult for a moment, but then it was passing through his clothing to settle back where it belonged.

Only he wasn’t so sure. It had felt safe, with her holding it. Uncomfortable, but safe.

Her hand rested on his chest, clasped in his where she’d released his heart.

“Using dark magic is like breathing,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t even think about it.”

She understood him, but could never breach the gap. It hadn’t been that way, back in the other land.

“Tell me,” she said.

It was easier here, his head in her lap, her other hand in his hair like he was something precious.

The rain beat down outside, but didn’t enter their sanctuary.

“I’m not sure I always know when I’m doing it,” he admitted to her. “Bae asked me not to use it at all, once, but… we argued, Belle.”

It had hurt, not being able to give his son what he really wanted. He’d been terrified of losing him, whether to external danger or rejection.

Hoping that she would forgive him, he whispered, “I will not make a promise to you that I am unable to keep.”

Her hand touched her lips, then his, and brushed over his cheek. “I wouldn’t ask it of you.”

She thought about what he’d said. “Maybe you will know the difference with time.”

“Maybe.”

She grinned. “You can do anything you want to, Rumplestiltskin.”

“Except kiss my wife,” he said dryly.

She made a face, her thumb tucking under his lip. She didn’t seem to be deterred by the appearance of his teeth. If anything, he thought she reassured them both this way. He liked it.

His teeth played with the ridge next to her nail.

“That was our choice,” she said, running the calloused pad over his upper incisor.

He closed his lips around her and drew her further in.

“Greedy man.” She explored his mouth.

He would have replied, but he didn’t want to give up her thumb in his mouth. Its presence comforted him as much as it aroused him.

“Life is already better for those who live here,” she said. “The ogres are gone, and if you want to ask Ariel to take us back, I won’t hesitate a moment.”

He didn’t deserve her.

“My… our family is happy here,” he said, releasing her with reluctance.

She smoothed his saliva over his skin, rubbing the moisture gently into him. “They love you, Rumple. Every single last one of them.”

“But would they come with us, if you and I chose to go?” It was a terrible thought. He couldn’t risk splitting his family again, or losing even one of them.

Belle bit her lip. “I don’t know…. I think so, if it were soon. Jaime is ecstatic over the Equinox Valley project. The longer we stay, the harder it will be to choose to leave.”

He shook his head. “Horse-mad, Jaime is. She was raised on that land’s stories.”

“I should like to read more of those.”

He would ensure Belle never ran out of books; she wouldn’t be able to finish everything she wanted to read.

“I’m sure she brought them with her, but Belle--” he pressed his cheek into her palm “--I’m not ready to give up so soon.”

Her mischievous glance travelled down his body. “We’ll just have to find other things to kiss.”

Belle’s definition of ‘other things’ was continually expanding. He drew one knee up so he could give himself some leverage against the floor.

She looked back to his face. “You told me once, that magic came with a price, Rumple. What does that mean?”

She wanted to know this _now_? The blood in his brain had gone the way of his cock, and left little to spare.

He had to gather his wits first.

“Light magic carries a much lesser price,” he said. “Usually paid in the physical energy of the wielder. Pushed too far, it can even drain them to death. Dark magic… it destroys what you love. It takes your freedom, often your freedom to choose.”

She didn’t like that one bit. “How so?” she asked.

“It chooses its own outcome, not always what you think it will be, like a clerk who writes contracts in type so small you can’t see them. The more powerful the wielder, the larger the type, but the bigger the noose.”

“Bae said you were good with loopholes.”

“He would.”

He conjured the dagger, held it between them.

In the other land, it had been just a blade. Here, it was a living, breathing thing, tied directly to his soul.

“This was my price,” he said. “Once, forever.”

She didn’t understand. Not until he picked up her hand and wrapped it around the hilt.

His free will was gone.

She stiffened, her eyes scrutinizing him where he lay in her lap. He’d known the power of that control once. It travelled up your arm and made you feel invincible.

It was a lie.

Belle pushed the dagger back to him, the hilt resting flat upon his chest. “Not even as a bedroom game, Rumple.”

Something warmed and warred in him, conflicting emotions, love and fear and wonder.

“I can’t,” he told her.

She frowned. “Can’t what?”

He swallowed. “I can’t move my hand in that direction while you hold it,” he whispered. “Not unless you tell me to.”

He didn’t want her to cry. He’d made the choice to become the Dark One, whatever his motives might have been.

Tears trickled down her cheeks. Her throat worked, but all that came out was an ungraceful croak. She shook her head, wrapped his fingers around the hilt as if he were an invalid with a spinal injury, then let go.

The return of it was like orgasm, but without the pleasure, just a release and the return of temporary freedom. It mocked him.

He shuddered, banished the thing from between them.

The small square of light from the high window drifted across the floor. He considered her initial question.

He took her hand in his and kissed her fingers. “Building our home with light magic seems a monumental undertaking,” he told her. “A brooch to a castle is quite a leap.”

She squeezed his hand. “A little at a time,” she promised, then frowned in thought.

“What would happen if someone who held that dagger were to tell you to use light magic to do something?”

He sat up, peering at her. Did she want it back already? She’d felt the power; he knew it’s pull.

She hadn’t used the word ‘order.’ She’d said ‘tell,’ like she was uncomfortable with the idea.

As he’d unknowingly told his predecessor so many years ago, _To keep a man like the Dark One as a slave? I’d be terrified_.

He thought perhaps Zozo had seen through him. What if he hadn’t been able to provoke him into killing him? He’d trusted Rumplestiltskin with his secret.

Bastard.

Rumplestiltskin trusted Belle.

In hindsight, their idea was foolish.

They phrased the compulsion carefully. The dagger once more in her hand, she said, “Use light magic to close that door.”

The order was contradictory. The dark magic that forced the light to act _hurt_. It burst from him like a firehose, as though the dark magic were a solid thing trying to expel the light.

The result was overkill.

The heavy door closed with a deafening boom and splintered to pieces, taking chunks of the surrounding stone with it.

_Fire in the hole!_ He’d heard the phrase from a few war veterans he’d known in the other land.

Belatedly, it meant, ‘You should have warned me.’

If he’d known.

Belle yelped, covered her head with her arms and tumbled away, the dagger flailing dangerously.

Shrapnel sliced into his back, ripping his clothing to pieces. Belle, farther away and partially shielded by him, was hit by less.

“Stop!” she shouted.

He watched her bleed, and couldn’t move a muscle.

In the back of his mind, something uncurled from its cave.

If the one who held his dagger died, he would be free again.

Loopholes.

_Free_ , the dark magic crooned, even though her wounds weren’t deep enough to be life-threatening.

Blood trickled down her shoulder.

She gasped.

“Take it, take it back!” she cried.

Relief surged through him, and his hand closed on the dagger’s hilt. He buried it deep under rock in the bottom of the ocean.

Magic swirled around his fingers, then, reaching out to her.

“No!” she pushed him away. “That’s dangerous, Rumple.”

They didn’t know exactly how, but maybe why.

Dark magic stole, it destroyed, it betrayed even the wielder, often without them knowing until much later.

He’d forgotten, already. Belle’s injury brought something to the fore of him that reacted in instinctive panic.

“Belle, I’m sorry,” he said helplessly.

She crawled over jagged wood and sharp stone to hug him, but then jerked back when he hissed.

“Rumple?” she asked in alarm. 

HIs back was covered with lacerations, his shirt and waistcoat shredded, falling around him in drafts. He banished them, lest the fabric stick in the healing flesh.

Not a moment too soon; he winced.

Belle turned him, and he let her, sending the scattered debris away as well. There wasn’t much to see of the damage anymore.

Belle, on the other hand, bled from a dozen small cuts on her body. Thankfully, they’d missed the softer tissue of her face.

He knew what the light magic felt like, now. Not a tiny trickle, but a full torrent that would have drained a normal man to death.

He wasn’t even tired.

Belle had forced the dark magic to use the light to obey her.

While the dark magic struck back, causing damage where it could, the light opened pathways in him that he hadn’t known existed before.

It was as convoluted as anything he’d ever heard of, but… he concentrated, and slowly, his palm filled with white light.

He wanted to grin; he wanted to dance.

Belle’s mouth dropped open. She covered it with her cupped hands.

He arched an eyebrow solemnly, innocently. “May I use this instead?”

~

Later, over the remains of a meal, he explained. “If you say, ‘move that rock from here to here,’ dark magic will do my bidding, but if you were to say, “Create something like this from whole cloth, then dark magic would be useless, and only light magic would be able to accomplish the task.”

“This could be used to practice?” Belle asked. Her gaze travelled over his bare shoulders.

He nodded.

She hadn’t let him conjure up another shirt. As long as he wasn’t chilled--she liked the view, she’d informed him.

“What shall we make, then?”

‘We,’ she’d said. It warmed him, and he kissed her hands.

Chilled? No, far from it.

“Something useful… bowls?” He needed something more….

“A cradle!”

Oh.

Definitely more, yes.

She glowed. “I _want_ … a cradle.”

She wanted, she said. She demanded of him a thing to safeguard what he most craved to give her. Sometimes he thought it the only thing he had to give, and she held it more precious than anything.

He bowed his head, humbled by her request, then swallowed, nodded. “What shall it look like?” he asked.

She tilted her head, thinking. “Mahogany wood? Like Bae’s eyes.” _Like yours, once_. “I like that colour.”

He cleared their blankets from a spot on the floor, folding the edge over neatly.

“Bae might already be working on something,” he warned her, returning to her side.

She smiled. “That’s all right. We can use more than one.”

“Greedy woman,” he teased, but there was a question behind the banter.

“Very greedy.”

His hand in hers twitched. “Work to do,” he replied.

She sighed. “Shall we?”

~

“Didn’t you make my dress, that day we found our castle?” Belle asked Rumplestiltskin another day, as they drafted lists of industries that still needed the seeds of places, materials, and people to start them growing again.

They worked in Eric’s great hall, which seemed to be the gathering place for everything for rebuilding. People were constantly coming and going, talking in corners and rushing out again, excitement at their heels.

Rumplestiltskin sat upon the table, putting her notebook aside. “I merely altered it. It’s close, but not creation.”

“Perhaps that could be the next step.”

“Alteration?”

The table was getting full. Documents, maps, quills, and inkwells littered the surface. He’d had to push aside the clutter to sit there. She eyed the length of it.

“Do you think Eric will mind?” she asked.

Tables were the last thing on their production lists. They were expensive in terms of time for people who were busy putting up walls and roofs for the next winter.

They’d missed the window to get crops into the ground for the year, but land-clearing was but one of many things needed.

“He won’t even notice.”

The table got a little longer every day.

Eric noticed, but didn’t comment.

~

When Rumplestiltskin added the second floor, there was a nursery attached to their rooms, not far from their library.

There were a dozen suites for guests--for there would be guests--and a wide lawn between the castle and the south gate.

There was a ballroom, where they’d danced, gold-veined marble gracing its floors, tall windows with streaming sunlight, and high chandeliers lighting the cavernous space after sunset.

Their castle would be bursting at the seams with light, if Belle had her way.

~


	29. Chapter 29

Few had any knowledge of the Dark One in this land now. Belle was right; there was no history here, no established small-town gossip, no reputation as the child of a crook or the deserter from a never-ending war.

There was no one watching but Baelfire today, and the man’s donkey, who swished her tail and brayed indignantly at the sound of raised voices around her.

The man’s protesting voice stopped.

It was only three steps for Rumplestiltskin to the snail who had once been a man, but Baelfire was there before he’d taken more than one, putting himself between them and blocking his way.

Rumplestiltskin faltered. “Bae?”

“No, Papa.” His son, taller than him now, stubbornly stared him down. “Change him back.”

There was nothing of the anxious boy he’d been the last time they’d played this scene, so many years ago. The boy who’d thought he wouldn’t protect him, not at the cost of another man’s life.

“But Bae, he--”

Baelfire cut him off; his broad hand planted itself firmly in the middle of his chest. No one else would dare, not if they knew.

The man had hurt his son! He needed to die.

“No, Papa,” Baelfire repeated, softer this time. He edged closer, peered into the dark-fueled rage that consumed him, saw the dismay and the aching fear of loss, and cupped Rumplestiltskin’s upturned face with both hands. “We will not let you go.”

“Bae, he hurt you,” he whispered, but he knew he was already winding down. It felt as though he could breathe again.

“I know, Papa,” Baelfire said steadily. His strong fingers sunk into Rumplestiltskin’s curls, his thumbs sweeping over the crow’s-feet that would never get any deeper. “I will deal with him, after. I think you scared him plenty.”

Baelfire tilted Rumplestiltskin’s head down. Rumplestiltskin let him, but then froze, the danger prickling at him. It would have been so easy to push his son away.

“Remember please,” Baelfire said, “that any one of us can break your curse. There are nine of us now, and we are growing.” His nose brushed between his eyebrows, a caress and a threat all at once.

“Go ahead, stop me,” Baelfire dared him, and waited.

Rumplestiltskin shivered, anger giving way to awe.

Nine of them, and they were growing; Belle was carrying his daughter.

He huffed in acquiescence. A negligent wave, and purple-tinged smoke restored the snail to a man, who looked about dazedly.

Baelfire embraced him tightly.

“Go see Belle,” he said.

~ 

He found her in their room, pouring over some of the agricultural books she’d brought with them, her pen busy taking notes.

She knew something was wrong the moment he appeared, for she looked up with a worried frown.

“What happened?” she asked, standing from the desk.

He clung to her, told her the whole sorry tale.

“He did it?” she asked when he finished.

“Did what?”

“He told me, in the other land, about the first time.”

She led Rumplestiltskin back to the desk. He knelt beside her, his knees under her chair, his head tilted on her knee where he could see her. She smoothed his hair, tucked it behind his ear.

“Bae was right,” he said. “The magic does change me.”

She waited for him to explain, her hand warm on his head.

“When I was in the other land and remembered tha’ incident, I was appalled, but here… I’m not, except when I’m with you.”

“Why do you think that is?” she asked curiously.

He focused inward, poking and prodding, and compared his mental states.

“Things are clearer with you? Like there’s a bubble of safe space around us.”

He grinned at her flirtatiously. “You become a beacon of light in an ocean of darkness.”

When she smiled at him, it reached her eyes. She would have the most beautiful laugh lines in a few decades.

He paused. “It was the same when Bae got close. I could think again.”

She processed this. “I can’t keep you with me all the time,” she said.

“I’m not sure I’d mind.”

“Yes, you would,” she told him fondly. Then, “There are steps which lead up to an incident like today’s, that we may be able to avoid.”

The dark magic grumbled in the back of his mind at the idea, but Rumplestiltskin hummed questioningly.

“What happened, in here--” she tapped his head “--today?”

He replayed the incident.

“Everything seemed so much bigger,” he said. “I was angry that Bae had been hurt, and….” He swallowed. “I was terrified of losing him.”

Blue eyes watched him solemnly.

“It’s like being a teenager again,” he said. “In the other land, they called the adolescent madness ‘hormones,’ tha’ the chemicals in a growing boy’s system dae strange things to his brain.”

“Bae compared you to Ian on a sugar high.”

“He did?”

She huffed a laugh, then, “You do have some control,” she pointed out. “He told me why you chose to turn that man into a snail.”

“How much did my son tell you?”

“He said that he’d asked you not to use magic to kill.”

He’d been able to give his son that much. “It only altered the method I chose,” he argued. “Not the fact tha’ I did it.”

She nodded, and was quiet for a time. She hadn’t given up; she chewed her lip as she mulled something over.

He loved to watch her, just like this, as intimate as two people could be without engaging in actual intercourse.

“What would happen if the areas around Bae and me were to overlap?”

He stopped breathing.

Their eyes met, and hope kicked his heart into racing.

There were so many of them now, and they were seldom all together in close proximity, or perhaps he would have noticed.

“And the others?” he asked.

During an incident like today’s, any thinking person’s first instinct would be to run away. The idea of anyone approaching him as Baelfire had done….

“The adults first,” she said.

“Let’s try your idea slowly this time, shall we?” he said.

He wouldn’t risk the children, not after the way that shrapnel had injured Belle.

She made a face at him, but nodded.

His muscles quivered under his skin. He wanted to leap up and bolt out the door, to determine _right now_ the answer to her question, but everyone was out for the day, and shouldn’t be dragged back for something that could wait.

It _could_ wait, he told himself. In the meantime she calmed him, and changed the subject.

“Rumple, your greatest strength is your desire to protect our family. The dark magic takes the very best of you and skews it beyond recognition.”

Her finger traced the shell of his ear, twined in his curls. “Perhaps it would be wisest to stay with one of us, for a while, when you go out.”

“I’m on probation?” he asked.

She laid her palm against his cheek.

It didn’t sound so very bad; his family was everything to him. He wouldn’t mind an excuse to keep them close; they would avoid him soon enough.

It would be hideously selfish.

“Belle, I’m na’ less likely to kill when family is around--quite the opposite.” Shame coloured the words. What if Jaime or Ian or Evan, or (gods forbid) his daughter, were present?

They’d only been here a short time. How many more such incidents would occur?

“But as Bae proved today, we can pull you back,” Belle argued. “We’ve done it; we can do it again.”

He couldn’t sit still. He rose to his feet, pacing the short length of the room. “What if you can’t, Belle? What if one of the children were to witness what nearly happened today?”

Her sadness at that nearly broke him. He returned to her, seeking the comfort of her touch.

“Belle…” his voice cracked, “I’d be like a dog who bites strangers who come too close to his family.”

The one who has to be put down.

“We will not separate you from the children, Rumple,” she promised him. “Although perhaps--” he stiffened, and she shushed him, “--we might keep strangers from the children when you are around.”

He thought about this. “That ball you wanted, after the spring planting?” He could only see a terrible ending for anyone who came too close.

“No children unattended... as it should be, regardless, in strange company. We can have our fun, Rumple.”

She smiled at him. “We shall not play host for so long that I don’t get to dance with my husband.”

“Only one dance?” he teased her.

She hummed. “Many dances. You will tire before I do.”

He laughed.

Her nails skritched patterns over his skin. He would have purred had he the correct vocal cords for the sound. It was soothing, while at the same time coiling arousal slowly tighter within him.

“Is it possible to find some way to control the impulses?” she asked.

He wanted her. He resettled himself, his forearm wrapping about her shin. While a human man might think the things he found comfortable to be the opposite, Rumplestiltskin hadn’t been human for a long time.

“Hardwire my brain for something else,” he suggested flippantly. He felt her hand still.

“Is that something to do with electricity?” she asked warily.

He hadn’t meant it literally. “It’s only an idiom.” Details. “You remember the calculators, in th’ other land?”

She nodded.

“They were made up of tiny electrical circuits. If one wanted to change how they worked, one could solder new wires in place of the old.”

She sucked in her breath, a tremor starting in her hand. “I don’t want to change you, Rumple.”

He covered her hand with his, held it steady. He’d been only facetious before. Now there was no levity in him.

“But I want to change for you.” He would do anything to keep her. She would leave him, surely.

She bent over him, her cheek pressed to his hair. He breathed her in, greedy for the smell of her, and pulled her thumb into his mouth.

He didn’t fit it into his cheek this time, but drew it farther in, past his teeth and over his tongue.

She tasted of soap and ink at first, not at all pleasant. He persisted until those washed away and left only Belle. He wanted her, but if she wished to merely hold him, he would wait.

Belle knew, though he did not say, felt it in the way he swallowed and melted against her.

She kissed his hair and sat up, her regard soft and fond.

The pregnancy sickness that had so distressed him was still very much present in her on many days. He would not ask for more than what she chose to give him.

Her thumb in his mouth, she slid her knee to the other side of him, tilted his head up and examined him.

Captivated, he shifted, inched closer to her. He would be content with this, he told the tightening pain in his trousers.

Blue like her opal ring, blue like topaz, blue that saw him and did not find him repugnant.

Experimentally, she pressed down on his tongue.

He moaned despite himself, a tearing, guttural thing. His hips jerked. He closed his lips around her and swallowed.

He would not ask.

She knew him. She shook her head at him. Her thumb moved to hook behind his lower incisors.

He teased her with his tongue, savoured the discomfort of the pressure there.

“Up, my Rumple.” She guided him to kneel upright, held him prisoner in her grasp.

She needed to look down to find his laces one-handed. She shushed him when he would have helped her.

“I want your arms behind your back,” she told him softly.

He obeyed her, grasped his elbows as he thought pleased her.

She smiled; her hand closed on his cock.

“You _will_ ask me when you need this,” she ordered.

He whined.

She didn’t make him wait, but stroked him firmly. Her thumb mapped bone inside his jaw; he curled his tongue around her, thrust eagerly into her hand.

“When you are ready, my love.”

Belle raised his chin and kissed his throat. Her teeth rested there, delicate and sharp.

He wanted, begged her.

She bit him.

~

It started with a mild ache in his foot, only noticeable because they’d expected it. His balance shifted, and he reshaped the boot he wore with hardly a thought.

Belle glanced down, and up in question.

“Can’t have everything,” he said, his lips at her forehead.

She wrapped her arms tighter around him. “Wendy?”

Wendy passed Evan to Ariel and walked forward.

“You’re different, Grandpa.” She grinned. “We should have done this in daylight.”

“Another day, when John and Michael are here,” Baelfire said.

The bones in his ankle ground. He’d been abusing it, and never even known.

Rumplestiltskin looked at his son. “Will you tell them?”

Morraine joined them. “We will,” she said. “Hello, Papa.”

Did he look that different?

“I want to see!” Jaime cried. She bounced on her toes next to Eric.

Morraine smiled, “Come on then.”

The little girl ran. Baelfire scooped her up before she could collide with them. “You know better.”

“But you said--”

“Not when Grandpa wears his real face.”

Baelfire called to Ian, who approached more sedately than his sister. 

Morraine looked across the room, and Ariel brought Evan over.

Belle loosened her hold on Rumplestiltskin, but there were too many people close around for him to fall. She stepped back as Morraine took Evan from Ariel and placed him in Rumplestiltskin’s arms.

Tears flowed freely down his face.

His ankle throbbed.

“I am the richest man alive,” he whispered.

~

Over a scattering of maps that night, Rumplestiltskin told Eric that he and Belle would be leaving for their new home soon.

Eric nodded, his balding scalp shining in the lamplight.

“We’re ready to stand on our own feet.” He straightened from the table. “It would have taken us years to get to where we are now.”

Eric had become a friend, as bizarre as that notion was for him here. He’d known a few in the other land, but Eric saw him as he was, both Dark One and father, and offered him his hand.

“Ariel gave me back my family,” Rumplestiltskin said, clasping it. He wouldn’t have known how to navigate that custom in this land if not for his time in the other. “Belle wants us to host a ball in the spring. You and Ariel will attend?” 

Eric grinned. “Wouldn’t miss it for my kingdom.”

~

Cooking in this land was a messy business. One didn’t run down to the store for meat; it had to be killed and gutted and skinned.

This land had not seen wheat flour in years. Life as the heir to a prosperous estate meant that Belle had had little to do with it when it had been available.

She wanted to know. She wanted to know everything.

Their new kitchen was partially underground, a door in one wall leading out into what would become gardens, but for now was only raw turned earth. Windows ran along the remainder of that wall, streaming afternoon sunlight.

It was under one of these that he showed her how to knead the dough, push-fold-turn, and set it to rise on the hearth.

Just behind him, her hands on his arms, and he knew his state had not escaped her. It happened so easily here, like a randy teenager.

Her fingers spread over his chest, a gentle question. He’d seldom been so conscious of the beats of his own heart. He’d only been watching her. Only--there was no ‘only’ with Belle.

Her eyes, when he dared to turn and meet them, held no censure. Affection, in measure that still bewildered him.

She had flour on her cheek; he had more on his. He swept the pile from the table and laid her down in the remnants, white dusting her clothing and sending small puffs into the air to settle in her dark locks.

Bits of dough cracking from her palm, she cupped his cheek. Her floured thumb rested on his lips. Lifetimes ago he was certain he would have given up his magic in a heartbeat for the merest brush of her mouth on his.

They couldn’t now, but he scraped the dough from her skin with his teeth.

Her eyes devoured his mouth, even cursed as his appearance was. She dug her fingers upward into his hair, deliberately mussing it.

The pond on the grounds called to them, the heat of summer radiating even through these stone walls. He mussed her hair in turn, sucked her fingers clean, and when he could not bear the absence of her mouth any longer he dropped his head and nosed at her chin, under her jaw, smudging flour in his wake.

She moaned.

He grinned, rubbed the curve of his cheek into her.

“Shall I mark you, my lady?” he asked against her throat.

A sharply indrawn breath; she pulled him closer, her chin lifting in invitation. Her hands in his hair tightened, and when he only nipped her, tightened more. A deep groan rose from him; he latched onto her, sucked her flesh into his mouth, her cries reaching higher, feeding his possessive _want_.

He could not wear her marks; he had not found how to make them linger.

But she did not savour pain the way he did, and he would not cause her distress. He banished the flour from his hand with a flick and found his way beneath her underthings, the ties of her garments surrendering to his magic.

Yes, she was wet; his fingers squelched as they entered her, first one, and then the next. And ready, too--her back arched, the flex of her throat gasping under his greedy mouth, the sound felt through his lips, his teeth.

Gone was the woman who withheld his reward when privacy would have allowed. Belle gave him her cries, her pleas freely, clenched around his fingers and came.

“Rumple!”

He chuckled into her hair, laid kisses in the hollow of neck and shoulder, stroked her, rolled his hand and coated it in her juices.

Her gasp heaved against his mouth; her hand closed around his wrist.

“What did I tell you about asking me?” 

His heart stuttered. He’d been too forward. He’d been foolish to think she would not tire of him, especially here, with his monstrous appearance. 

He pressed his face into her, stifling the agony that ripped through him. He would beg, if it meant he could keep her. He’d failed with Milah; he hadn’t been persuasive enough. He couldn’t even kiss Belle. What woman would want--

“No, Rumple.”

Belle was carrying his daughter; he couldn’t lose her too.

“No,” she repeated, iron in her voice matched by iron in her grip on his wrist, forbidding him from pulling away. It still surprised him how strong she was. “I _want_ you to tell me when you need me.”

Slowly, cautiously, he raised his head.

Her eyes held not a hint of rejection. Sunlight streaming in the windows, cloudless skies possessed no richer colour.

“You meant it?”

Drying dough broke off, caught in his hair. Her hand was a warm weight on the back of his head, solid and real.

“You are mine. I will not neglect you.”

Why? Why would she commit herself to such a thing? Did she really know what she was promising him?

“I’m not normal here, Belle. You shouldn’t have to--”

“I want to.” She drew his hand from her and sat up. Flour sprinkled down inside his shirt, stuck in her juices on his skin.

His smeared hand held between them, she cupped his wilted erection, flour dusting his trousers. His cock twitched, stirred to life; she unlaced his trousers, switched his hand to her other and drew him out before the constriction could become painful.

“You gave this to me,” she said.

It was always hers.

“If you do not come outside of me, then this--” she stroked him with the hand he’d sucked clean, watched him gasp “--is mine. Mine to care for, mine to satisfy, and mine to deny, if I so choose.”

A helpless shiver ran down his spine; his cock grew harder under her attentions.

“You like that, don’t you?” she said softly.

He bent his head to her, nuzzled her forehead in reply.

“Me, denying you on a whim.”

She guided his smeared hand downwards, wrapped it around his cock. He groaned, mouthed her warm skin with his lips.

“Most men, in lieu of a partner, make do with their hands. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” he said, ragged. Her hands over his kept it from moving. His magic rebelled; he smothered it.

She turned her face to see him, nudged his chin with her nose.

“But you will not.”

It was both a statement and a command--yes, that was what it meant; she acknowledged the gift, claimed it, made it hers. He could touch himself all he liked, but there would be no relief for him without her permission.

Her teeth at his jawline, nipping. She squeezed his hand.

“Put your other behind your back,” she said. She reached around him, caught his wrist, the pads of her fingers at his pulse where the odd texture of his curse was thinner.

“Good. Show me.”

She’d hindered his movement, but he was so close, just from her touch on him. Her juices half-dried, he rubbed them into his foreskin, palmed the head and stroked.

His own hand would drive him mad. Too much, and his hips bucked.

“Belle, I can’t,” he begged her.

She shushed him. “Are you waiting for me?”

Shaky breaths against her neck. “Please.”

“Good.”

One stroke, another. Her fingers wove with his, squeezed him. Stroke.

“Stop.” She peeled his hand away.

A high-pitched whine built in his throat; he muffled it against her.

“Please.”

She was pulling at her skirts, clearing them aside. He couldn’t, couldn’t give her the pleasure she deserved, he would explode, he would come the moment he was in her, he would--

“Don’t,” she said, drawing him to her, her hand secure around his floured wrist. “Don’t worry about it.”

She soothed him, lined them up. “I want to, Rumple.”

In her, warm, wet, she held him, pushed the collar of his shirt aside and sunk her teeth into his shoulder.

He came howling, sobbing great gulps of air, her hair a caress on his face. She held him as he caught his breath, as he withdrew from her, kissed his neck where she’d bitten him.

She peeked up at him and smiled.

He tried to apologize, but she wasn’t having it. “You’re different here. We chose this.”

“It was never a problem before.”

“It’s not a problem now.”

~

The flour itched, Belle said. Summer’s heat brought sweat to her skin, though not as much to his. Their finished bread in a basket on the bank, he conjured soaps for her, led her into cool water, and washed her.

There was a series of bruises forming on her neck; he added to them, held her to him. There was no hiding his arousal if he’d wanted to, but she murmured her approval into his shoulder, and then into the curls around his cock.

On the bank, he dipped the bread in oil and fed it to her, licking where the drips missed her mouth. Their bellies full, he poured the rest of the bottle onto her back, spread its contents over her.

Harder, she begged him, slick fingers, palms, over her shoulders, down to her thighs until her muscles turned to jelly. A little coaxing, and she dragged her legs under her so he could reach her breasts, her nipples, his body lowering to rest over her, his knees on either side of hers.

His cock slid in the crack between her cheeks, her moans purred against his chest as though they were coming from himself.

One knee between her thighs, then the next.

“Good,” she praised him, spread further for him. His slippery hands, all the way up into her damp hair, tentative handfuls in his fists.

She bucked under him, pressed back into him, his throbbing cock.

“Rumple, ‘s good, Rumple now, now, now. Ah!”

All around his cock, her spasming welcome.

He pulled her head back, nipped at her bruised skin. “Touch yourself, sweetheart.”

Onto his lap, her thighs as wide as she could get them, his fist in her hair bending her into an arch. Her fingers dipped into herself alongside his cock, her entrance tighter with his thrusts. He wrapped his free hand over hers, gave her the leverage she needed to grind down.

She screamed, and the birds went silent.

~

Two centuries on a tropical island meant that none of Rumplestiltskin’s family were any strangers to water when they returned to him. The mermaids left children alone; it was when John aged past that nebulous line that they ran into trouble.

The year Jaime entered school, all of her new friends knew how to swim, or were learning during the coming summer--except her. This was a sorry state of affairs.

“It’s a shame that their parents can’t teach them,” Morraine said.

Baelfire grinned. “That would be so much more fun, wouldn’t it?”

~

Despite years in a seaport village, Rumplestiltskin had never learned, either. This was also a sorry state of affairs, according to his son.

“Bae, I can’t go swimming,” he said in an undertone. They were packing a cooler with food. Quieter still, “People will stare.”

His particular set of scars, while not uncommon in the Frontlands, would definitely turn heads here. He didn’t want the others to see them, either. It was bad enough that Baelfire knew.

In the heat of summer, when many men discarded tunic and cloak, Rumplestiltskin did not, and every adult in the Frontlands knew why. He only hoped their neighbors had not told Morraine.

Baelfire waited until Michael closed the door behind him.

“When Harry’s dad started his chemo, the doctors said that a sunburn could be dangerous for him. Now he wears a shirt outside, all the time.”

Puzzled, Rumplestiltskin wondered why he was telling him this. “But I can’t burn.”

Baelfire tilted his head. He wore his hair shorter than he had as a child, and his curls did not fall over his eyes.

“Oh.”

~

They had to go a bit south. Little as the cold bothered him, the others found Maine’s cooler temperatures less than ideal for swimming on most days.

They wanted something _warm_.

The sand slipped under his cane. Morraine walked with them to the water, Baelfire’s arm looped about his waist. The first waves licking about their heels, Rumplestiltskin handed the cane off to her.

“I’ll keep it safe,” she promised, and kissed his cheek.

~

The beach visits became a regular excursion for them. The next year, while Baelfire was retrieving their picnic, Jaime whispered to her mother, “Why does Grandpa wear a shirt for swimming?”

Rumplestiltskin swallowed, and pretended not to have heard.

The silence stretched too long, then Morraine asked,

“Did Daddy put sunscreen on your back?”

“ _Ma_ -ma.”

“Remember that burn you got the time we forgot?”

“Why doesn’t Ian have to wear a shirt?”

“He will if he doesn’t have his sunscreen on. Ian!”

~

The castle’s private living quarters were not the first to be added to the second floor--the library was. It formed a spacious tower on the northwestern corner, adjacent to the ballroom.

Room to expand, he told her, mostly-empty shelves surrounding them.

The ballroom still featured neither walls nor roof.

Constructing their home with light magic took longer, but Belle was pleased. They slept that night in the dungeon cell, the same blanket from Eric’s castle over the floor.

“Rumple!”

“I replaced it,” he defended himself. “I don’t think Eric wants it back, do you?”

She shook her head, beginning to unbutton his waistcoat.

He looked to her in question.

Her smile was fond. “Sometimes I like to do this without magic.”

His fingers knew where the stays of her bodice were without looking, the strands cat’s-cradling as he undid them, his wife’s bosom slowly revealed in shadowed fabric and fluttering layers.

She dropped his waistcoat to the floor, and searched his fitted silk shirt for more buttons, laces, anything, but came up short.

“Rumple?”

He’d been _that_ close to holding her breasts in his palms. He followed the line of her gaze and laughed.

“I forgot to add any closures.”

She snorted. “It’s not real?”

“It’s real; I made it. It has no buttons.”

Bemused was adorable on her. Half-exasperated, her lips twisted and her eyes would narrow. She’d turn her head and mock-glare at him sideways.

He wanted to kiss her.

“When you make it disappear, where does it go?”

He wanted her breasts in his hands. Soon.

“This one? Nowhere. It’s just--” he shrugged “--gone.”

She took the collar of his shirt in her hands. “So you won’t mind if I--” she tugged, lightly.

Oh. “Not at all.”

“I’ve always wanted to do this.” The seams offered some resistance; he nudged it along with a hint of magic, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

She ripped the silk from his collar to the waist of his trousers, pulled the rest out and tore it to the hem.

But he wasn’t to tear her dress.

Not fair.

~

“I want to keep this cell, just for us,” she told him.

He liked that idea. This had become their sanctuary.

“Even after we’ve nicer quarters?”

“This is special, Rumple. There are five other cells you can do as you like with. This one is ours.”

It was. He kissed her hair.

She snuggled closer in the darkness.

“We wouldn’t want it getting out that I kept my wife in a dungeon at night.”

“It’s a rather comfortable dungeon, thank you.”

~

The next day they left the village they’d been working in, walked out through the forest. They avoided displaying magic when unnecessary.

When they were out of sight, and Rumplestiltskin would have whisked them back home, Belle said, “Walk with me?”

He smiled. “I can think of no better company.”

They found a brook, its waters receded for the summer, and rambled along its edge.

“When I was a girl,” Belle said, taking his hand to cross a treacherous section, “I believed that any killing was wrong.”

He skipped after her, light on the slick stones, and caught up with her. “Children aren’t supposed to see evil, Belle. We shield them from it.”

She nodded, held some branches out of their path. “It is easy for a child to think that way.”

They frightened a brace of deer from the next bend.

Belle turned to him, held out her hands to hold his. “Then the ogres came.”

Rumplestiltskin winced, lifted her hands to press them to his mouth. “War brings out the worst in us.”

Her thumb crept in under his lip. “And the best.” She paused, remembering, perhaps. After a time, she refocused on him.

“When you turned that man into a snail, did it hurt him?”

Rumplestiltskin shook his head, slowly, and drew back enough to answer her. “He wanted to eat lettuce, later. Lots of lettuce.”

She laughed, her wet thumb stroking his cheekbone. “A craving for salad greens is mild, considering. We could build on this.”

“How?” he asked her.

She chewed her lip. “Turn them into snails all you like--”

“What?”

“--but--” she tugged his hair, “--bring them back to us alive and unharmed, and tell us, any one of us.”

He lifted her up onto a convenient ledge and frowned, uncertain. “Only tell you? Then what?”

“Then do as you please.”

His lips parted in surprise. She placed her finger upon him. “The point, my husband, is to remove them or others from immediate danger until you can find yourself again.”

“You trust me with that?”

She was quiet. “I trust you when you can think clearly, Rumplestiltskin.”

He would have liked to hear an absolute affirmation, but wasn’t sure he would have believed it. Belle spoke truth, no more and no less.

“I will love you, when you can’t. We chose this.”

The tip of his tongue pushed at her finger. It tasted of earth and leaves. It slipped into his mouth.

Her eyes were very blue.

“However long you need with us.”

Her finger in his mouth, she tilted his chin and bit him.

He whined.

“You will have the time you need.” 

Her lips at his ear, a promise.

“You will have us, and we will not let you go.”

~

John and Michael were in far-off Arendelle at the time of the next incident. Arendelle had remained untouched by the ogres, for the most part; ogres weren’t fond of the cold.

Out late one night, no one else was awake. Distance meant nothing to the Dark One.

No one had told the two of their discovery, nor Belle’s plan. They wanted to wait until John and Michael returned.

John was reading by a fire in an ornate sitting room of the type reserved for guests by the wealthy, those who still had wealth in this land. It was faded, as if it hadn’t been maintained in some time. He looked up when Rumplestiltskin appeared next to him, a delicate box of spun glass in his hands.

Alarmed to see him so upset, John laid aside his book.

“Grandpa?”

Rumplestiltskin banished the box to the mantle. The snail was no less repulsive as a man than in his current form.

“Belle said to come find someone, next time.”

“Next time what?”

“Next time I wanted to squish a snail.” Something loosened in his chest. No one he loved had been threatened, this time.

“Is this a prank?” John asked dryly.

Had Baelfire never told John of the incident he’d been witness to?

Rumplestiltskin shook his head. “We discovered that members of our family possess an aura that helps me when I forget myself.”

John went still.

“John?”

“Does it, help now?” There was something guarded in John’s tone.

“Yes, of course.”

“Michael is asleep in the other room,” John said, his voice lowered as though to keep from waking him.

Rumplestiltskin felt his heart break for his adopted child.

“John.”

The child who thought himself incapable of returning love.

He took John’s hand in his, fine tremors telegraphing into his skin.

“The area of influence is small.” He laid the backs of John’s fingers against his cheek. “Touching distance, no more.”

He heard Michael roll over, on the other side of the open door.

John swallowed. “I’ve been pretending, Grandpa.” The words cracked. He hid behind his fringe.

“No you haven’t.”

John raised his chin, but didn’t pull away. “Michael’s not damaged like me,” he said with something like pride.

Because John hadn’t let him.

This was becoming circular.

Rumplestiltskin had to find excuses to hug John. A greeting, a good-bye, a thank-you. The first had come when they’d returned to him.

He hadn’t found the second until Jaime was born.

If he’d learned nothing from his family since their return, it was that he had to be the one to reach out, until they remembered, two hundred years gone, that they could reach back.

Letters didn’t fill a gap like the one Pan had caused.

Rumplestiltskin didn’t wait for an excuse now, nor did he imagine the sound John made as he buried his forehead in his shoulder.

Belle was right. The high collars would have to go, later. He’d forgotten.

He heard a soft _click_ as John removed his glasses, laid them over his knee. Gradually, his body went limp, as though exhausted.

“Would you have protected Michael from the worst of it if you didn’t love him?” Rumplestiltskin asked.

John’s negative was a tiny movement more felt than seen. “Course not, but….”

There was a creak in the next room.

Michael poked his tousled head through the open door. “You’re an arse, John.”

John glared at him blindly.

Michael sighed. “Budge over,” he ordered his brother. He squeezed into the remaining space.

The glasses fell; Rumplestiltskin caught them. He set them out of danger, tapping them on the side table. John’s head followed the sound.

They’d determined exactly how far Rumplestiltskin’s family could be to have the desired effect; Michael was too far. He reached across John, took Michael’s hand.

Michael watched him, then grinned. “I knew it!”

“Knew what?” John asked, irritated.

“ _I’m_ not blind as a bat, John. Grandpa changes when we get close.”

John peered at Rumplestiltskin.

Michael’s eyes darted to the glasses still sitting on the side table. He frowned.

“We’ve made another discovery,” Rumplestiltskin said quietly. His other hand, lit with white light, rose to hover an inch from John’s temple.

John could see that much. “Is that….”

“I thought you couldn’t use light magic,” Michael said.

“Yes, well, I thought Dark Ones weren’t capable of true love, either.”

He looked back at John, his hand still raised between them. “Do you know... that healing magics are some of the easiest I’ve learned?”

John swallowed.

Belle said the light magic felt warm.

Rumplestiltskin touched the side of his face, but held the magic in check. It squirmed in his grasp, like an eager puppy. It _wanted_ to fix what was wrong.

He couldn’t, wouldn’t without John’s permission.

“Are you mad, Grandpa? Yes.”

~

John liked the cold; it reminded him of Maine.

Michael returned to Equinox soon after. Things were getting ‘a mite heated’ in the north, he said.

~


	30. Chapter 30

Belle was his sanity and his bane.

He knew she would not be pleased, but it wasn’t until she was near enough to touch him that he would remember why.

He didn’t want to remember. He’d failed her.

When he didn’t appear for their afternoon tea, she came to find him in his workroom.

“Rumple?”

Her voice was a balm and a bruise on his fears.

He didn’t turn, his slumped shoulders all the information she needed.

Her footsteps on the floorboards, the proximity of her, her touch on his back, and he was himself again.

It hurt.

“I’m sorry, Belle.”

Her fingers ran down his arm to take his hand. “We knew there would be days like this.”

He couldn’t bear to look at her. “How many days?”

Silence, and she turned him to face her. He closed his eyes to avoid her gaze, shivered with misery.

Her palm was warm upon his cheek.

“Do you want to tell me?”

He shook his head, swallowed.

She kept contact with him in times like this, across his cheek, over the shell of his ear, and down the side of his neck. Tied or free, she knew his vulnerable states. She knew his fears, pushed his layers of clothing aside to delve under his shirt, stepped closer, and it wasn’t close enough.

He dared to look at her. “May I?”

She could destroy him with a word--

“Yes, my love.”

\--or build him up with another.

The light magic came reluctantly to him this time. He had to coax it. Painfully slowly, it flooded them both with warmth, and she was closer, her hand splaying over his bare chest.

His words emerged in a broken crack. “I can never be the man that you want me to be.”

She drew him closer still, held him tightly.

“I don’t need you to be perfect, Rumple.”

He shivered in her arms. “I was… quite far from perfect today.”

“And I promised to love you, remember?”

How could he forget?

Her forehead against his, she sighed. “You didn’t believe me, did you?”

How could he believe she was possible?

Her hold on him loosened; panic nearly choked him--until she reached up to grasp his shoulders, found his bear-claw scars, and fitted her fingers between.

As though he were someone worthy of her.

No. Not.

His knees buckled under him. Denial on his lips and dissent upon his tongue, they trailed a path from clavicle to the valley between her breasts, sternum to belly and curls, riotous lace catching on his chin.

He knelt at her feet, and he was safe.

If not from himself.

She had never asked this gesture of him; it had always been his idea, his offering to her. He wanted her to ask it of him. He needed this, the intimate scent of her so near, her fingers in his hair now drawing slow patterns on his skull.

She stepped between his legs, her knees pressing into his ribs. He edged closer still, clung to her for balance, until his cock fitted between her ankles, her toes under his rear.

His nose in her curls, she grounded him.

Her belly clenched; this close, he felt the motion on his forehead. His breath shuddered over her; her scent changed, became headier, richer.

The scent of her in his open mouth, his tongue snaked out, played tentatively in her curls.

He heard her gasp, felt her seizing inhalation, froze. That was a good sound. He knew this! But fear haunted him.

Soft bristle of curls upon his cheek, he turned from her, hugged her knees in a desperate bid for comfort he did not deserve.

She petted him, caressed his hair. If he’d had a tail, it would have been between his legs.

From his hair to his jaw, bending lower to reach him, and her weight settled against his upper ribs.

She raised his chin and stroked his throat.

“Do you want to?” she asked him, his trachea protected in her hand.

He needed her, needed to earn a small bit of the esteem in which she held him.

“Please, Belle.”

She smoothed back his hair, dug her fingers into it and wrapped it in handfuls behind his head.

He whined at the tension; his pelvis rocked into her, arousal answering to the scent of her, her command over him, her hands that dictated the angle of his vision.

All he could see was her.

In the other land, and once in this, she’d pulled his head down for kisses.

“Yes, my Rumple.”

Now she pulled him in to her, held him by his hair.

His mouth watered with the intimacy allowed him, her silky-slick texture, the tickle of curls on his eyelids. He wanted her, more of her, lush upon his tongue, his cheeks, his nose, and running down his chin.

She should not permit him this.

She should not permit him many things.

More of her was in his hand, his fingers begging entrance, stroking where he could reach, circling when he could not, her hands encouraging him, tensing when he pleased her.

Her toes curled under him, under his tightening balls, then along his cock, rubbed over his thigh and down the other side, widening her stance for him.

More, she allowed him, opened to him. Greedy for her, deeper, his hand and mouth pursued her pleasure. Closer, she pulled him, untangled one fist and used his shoulder for balance. Her other foot repeated the motions of the first, under, along, over and down, less steady this time.

She wrenched moans from him with those simple movements; he gave them to her, the sound swallowed by her flesh, muffled. Her juices rewarded him, dampness over his cheeks, her fingers back in his hair, tension on his scalp.

Her words broke him out of his single-minded focus, a hoarse command. He’d done that to her.

“Want you to touch yourself.”

Could she feel his heart stutter through her hands on him?

His own touch was mercy and a torment, trembling with the effort to hold back, his attention split between his desires, his hand on his cock and his fingers in her, driving into her.

His hand in a vice between her legs, less firm around his cock, shaking. His orgasms were hers; he’d given them to her at the earliest opportunity, and never looked back.

Her breathy cries, his lips around her. His memories were filled with the cries of thousands in agony; she arched and matched them.

The sound soothed him, healed another fragment he didn’t know was broken.

Fiercer and messy, he sucked at her, unwilling for the sound to end. His hand on his cock never slowed, couldn’t slow.

But end it did, her clenching fading to shallow pulses, her heartbeat.

Her heartbeat slowed, and his fingers stayed, caressing where she’d invited him--just enough to keep the stickiness at bay, even as his cock ached for greater contact.

She petted him. Long, careful licks plastered her curls to her skin. Murmurs of affection fell warmly on his ears.

From his hair to his jaw, his jaw to his mouth. He paused for her; her thumbs slipped inside. He met them with his tongue, the tip greeting her in welcome.

In the other land, and once in this, he’d met her tongue with his; now he twined it with her thumbs, a pale reflection, and all he had to give.

She tilted his head to see him, stroked his tongue in return, her nail dragging down the side.

He whined. His fingers in her spasmed.

“What do you need, Rumple?”

_You_ will _ask me when you need this._

Her thumbs withdrew, expectantly waiting.

‘Need’ and ‘want’ were very different. The lines blurred.

Her wet thumbs rubbed through the juices on his cheeks.

He struggled. His cock decided for him.

“Need you.”

She smiled. She’d won.

“Very good,” she praised him.

~

She’d won. He shared her victory.

Something within him was damaged by today, a deep, seeping wound that needed not only her forgiveness, but her approval.

Of him, as foreign as it seemed.

She lay upon his worktable, his cock still safe within her, and examined him as though she were working out a puzzle.

Something clicked. She frowned.

“Rumple, you weren’t trying to make something up to me, were you?”

His elbows supporting him, her head in his hands, his heart sank, the blood washing down through the backs of his tainted arms in hot prickles. He knew she’d be displeased, even without knowledge of the details.

“I can’t, but I still have to try.”

She was horrified. Horrified by _him_.

Nausea tightened his throat, swelled in his jaw, and ached in his eardrums.

Her voice cut through the building noise.

“No, you don’t.”

What?

Horror turned to sadness, and hope. “I love you, Rumplestiltskin.”

But…? He waited, dread coiling in his stomach.

Nothing followed. That was it.

She was frowning again. The pads of her fingers explored his hairline.

“I will not shun you when you make mistakes.”

He didn’t understand. She had every right to.

“Costly ones like this?” he whispered.

That gave her pause.

“Do you want to tell me?”

No.

“Do you need to?” she pressed.

He’d trusted her with his lesser secrets, none so likely to drive her away as this.

Her thumb found his mouth, open for her, and slipped inside.

He bowed his head to take the entirety of her in, his lips closing around the base, held her delicately between his furthest teeth.

“My Rumple,” she said, and drew his head down to rest upon her.

His cock fell out of her; she stretched one leg from where it was wrapped around him, then the other, settling them more comfortably around him.

“Do I need to drag it from you?” she asked him. She pulled out to smear his saliva up his cheek.

He couldn’t imagine bringing the sordid details of today into their bedroom.

“Not this, Belle.”

“All right.”

She would hold him like this forever, but he knew she would get sore and tired. A part of him wanted to know just how long she would indulge him. The part that loved her with everything he was forbade him.

Her arm wrapped over him; he kissed it.

“Mmm?”

“Would you come with me?”

~

The lord and lady of the castle strolled naked from its doors, the sun through peach trees plying light and dark in dappled array.

They snuck glances at one another, unwilling to release the other’s hand to get a better view.

Between the roots of her oak he held her.

There, where he could not see her face, he told her.

~

She loved him. She really, truly loved him.

It was one thing to know that Belle and his family were true love, quite another to believe it in his heart, the mangled thing that it was.

She turned in his arms, found nooks shaped for knees and knelt over him.

Her forehead on his, she said, “Someday, I will fail you.”

No! he denied the possibility, but yes, everyone did. He adored her--he wasn’t foolish enough to believe her to be perfect.

“When that time comes, I will hope that you will not weigh our scales, but remember today.”

The scales would be ever in her favour.

“You will find me and tell me when this happens again,” she informed him. It wasn’t a request. “I will not let you carry this alone.”

Tell her that it happened. He could live with that, perhaps.

“You’ve forgiven me, then?” His voice sounded small to his own ears.

Her fingers to her lips, then his, lingering.

“Yes, my love. I would not withhold that from you.”

~


	31. Chapter 31

He took her back to the pavilion on one of the last blazing hot days of summer.

It was cooler up here, and she did as she would have liked the first time; knelt with him in the center where she could not see the ground below, and admired the play of morning sunlight in his curls.

Her belly, just beginning to round with child, would soon bulge between them. As always whenever they were close, his hand went to it.

He no longer asked for permission, his touch reverent upon the panels of her bodice. She covered his hand with hers.

She could love him just for this. She’d loved their daughter from the moment she’d suspected her presence, something fierce and protective appearing overnight.

“I‘d like to see you,” she requested of him. He glanced up at her face, his irises pale gold in the sun.

Warm magic removed their clothing, leaving them bare. He looked to her for her approval, needing it.

Her fingers to her lips, then his, and up his pebbled cheek, into his hair. She pulled him to her until his head rested between her breasts, his shoulders within the curve of her arm. Her other arm slung down around his narrow hips, the length of his leg sprawled outward, the other tucked up under him.

He’d come a long way from the man who feared the lamplight on their wedding day.

Her husband craved skin contact, in this land where he thought himself unappealing. She stroked up his thigh, over his hip, and back again. He drew that leg in closer so she could reach more of it. The texture of his skin was more noticeable there; it rippled under her touch, sleek over hard muscle.

A cool breeze made her shiver, goosebumps rising on her skin. He frowned, and the cold stone beneath them became soft and warm, the blanket he’d stolen from Eric’s castle spread out beneath them.

She kissed the top of his head. “Thank you, my love.”

His smile transformed him.

She missed the sweet kisses from the other land, the slow, leisurely exploration of his mouth with her tongue. She bent down and bit his shoulder instead.

He arched and squirmed. He’d been hard since he’d removed their clothing, possibly before. It happened so easily in this land.

“Belle.” He sounded ragged. His hand sought her, circling, twining, gentle on her swollen sex beneath the curve of her belly, his other arm still curled around her waist.

She bit him where she could reach, firm open-mouthed spots of pain that she laved with her tongue in broad sweeps before moving on to the next, just off-set from the last.

He shuddered and jerked, his fingers no longer slow but thrusting in time with her teeth on him. He yelped when she touched his cock, thrust into her hand in stuttering pulses, begged her for his release, and came gasping within the circle of her arms.

She held him through it, on the very edge of orgasm as he writhed in her grasp. His fingers in her spasmed, drained twitches as he caught his breath.

His cheek pillowed on the top her belly now, he peered up at her from one eye, grey-gold in the shifting sun.

She caressed his shoulder; the marks of her teeth were gone.

“You interrupted yours,” he said. His hand started again, strong, unyielding to her rolling pelvis.

“Was worth it,” she said. “You’re beautiful.”

He faltered, staring up at her.

“Rumplestiltskin.”

If he’d been hard again he would have pounded into her, she thought. She saw a glimmer of silver, and then she was tilted forward in his arms, on all fours. Her toy that he’d crafted slid into her.

She screamed.

Clenched down on warm metal, came.

She was kneeling over him, her elbows cushioned in the blanket, Rumplestiltskin’s tongue on her soaked folds, cleaning her. The silver toy still rested within her; he worked around it.

She moaned. He chuckled into her.

“No one can stay hard forever,” he said.

The metal was warm and solid. Still sensitive, she pulled away, down his body, reached under when it would have escaped her, and trapped it over his abdominal muscles.

His hands were damp; she took them and leaned over him to cross them at the wrist. She held them above his head.

“Is there a way to keep a man hard?” she asked.

He could have escaped her easily.

He swallowed. “Yes, but… it’s not wise to use it for too long.”

She wanted to know.

“Humans are so easily damaged,” he explained.

“It would hurt?”

He nodded. “Not in a good way.”

That was not something he wanted; she stored the information away.

“What is it?”

A metal ring appeared on his palm; she switched his wrists to one hand and took it from him, watching him watch her.

“How do you know this?”

His eyes darted away; she touched his cheek. He returned to her, shadowed.

“It’s those memories, isn’t it?”

He grimaced, nodded.

“Are they bad associations?”

He was quiet, his fingers making that fibre-drawing motion, then, “There is very little that is associated with consensual acts, where those memories are concerned.”

That must be a terrible thing to carry. Her heart ached for him. “You would have nothing to work with, if you avoided everything you learned because the source was distasteful.”

He nodded. “There are some things that I may never be able to do, Belle.” The nervous motion becoming more pronounced, he begged her to understand. “Innocent by themselves, they are….”

“Contaminated?”

His eyes closed. 

She laid her cheek against his, the ring in her fist. It was big enough to fit several fingers inside. 

Enough. She nipped his chin to get his attention.

Those eyes were lovely, watchful.

She held up the ring, determined to bring him out of the moroseness they’d fallen into. “How do you use this?”

He blushed at the question, stammered, “Y... you fit it over the testicles--” the naked words fluttered in her belly. She clenched down on silver.

He smiled crookedly.

“--and push one’s _flaccid_ cock through it as well.”

She looked at him through her eyelashes.

His mouth quirked. Too late.

Why would she want a toy when she could have him? But--

“I can’t reach,” she said, her thumb caressing his wrist. She could, maybe. Not comfortably.

His eyes softened; his fingers curled. His magic pushed her hand away, gently. Warm metal formed between them, black iron anchored to the stone above his head, right through their blanket.

He was breathtaking. She traced along his bound arms. “Will that stay?” she asked.

His chest hitched. Now sitting up, she could see it. “Yes, it will stay.”

“You didn’t add any closures.”

He laughed. “Does my lady wish them?”

Her sex clenching, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Would they matter?”

She wanted to kiss him.

He shook his head. “It will stay,” he repeated.

She bit him.

The toy slid out of her, rolling over him and landing on the blanket by her knee.

She sank down onto him.

Yes, this was better.

~

She would have liked to remain up here all morning, but the practical truth was that there were no facilities of any kind, and she would not leave him bound and alone, even if he offered.

She tapped the metal with a finger. “I’m done with this.” she said.

He rolled over and snuggled into her the moment he was free. She wrapped him up in their blanket and held him to her, cocooned against the world.

She still held the ring in her fingers. She played with it between them. It was made of a non-precious metal, nothing more than utilitarian in its finish. “The iron,” she asked him, “is that your preference?”

There was silence. She waited for him, cozy in their refuge.

“I like whatever you choose,” he said at last. “The iron was….”

“A statement?” She was beginning to understand him better with time.

He nodded. “I am yours, dearest.”

She wanted to kiss him. She touched her nose to his, breathed him in.

“I meant it when I said that you are beautiful.”

Her husband’s eyes were guarded.

She turned the ring between her fingers, glancing down at it. “This is not....”

Cautiously, “It’s not very pretty,” he finished.

Gold would not be valuable again in this land for a long time. She could say this without him thinking her greedy, perhaps.

She tried out the words slowly. “When I put this on you, I’d like it to be a lovely thing, not something that detracts from you.”

There was a long moment, more silence.

He took her hand in his, kissed her fingers. Unseen, the ring warmed against her palm. It was heavier now.

She opened her hand, pleased.

“You may think little of yourself, my Rumple,” she twined her fingers in thick gold, “but this is what I want to put on you.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Then you’d best do it soon, my Belle, or you won’t be able to. ”

~

She left him in their bed and returned shortly, the ring in her hand. Sleepy and languid as he was, he began to harden the moment she touched him. But there--she’d got it.

He _was_ beautiful.

Golden, pebbled, mottled skin against crimson sheets, she set him against pillows and rode him, his hands on her hips, watched the sweat drip down his face as he strained toward release.

It sounded as though a thunderstorm were brewing outside.

She nipped him. “Do _not_ rip up my roses, Rumplestiltskin.”

The winds ebbed.

“It does take longer this way, doesn’t it?” She pinched his nipples, sank onto him again and again. She’d never been able to indulge this way. She rolled them between her fingers.

His head fell back, his throat bared. He groaned.

“How does the ring work?” she asked him mildly.

He panted for breath.

She slowed the motions of her hips. “Tell me.”

“Restricts… blood flow, out!” he gasped.

She stilled. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

He whined, arched. “Not for this long. Please, Belle!”

She’d learned cruelty, for him, but she really wasn’t very good at it. He would disagree, surely.

Another day she would see how far she could push him.

Not today.

~


	32. Chapter 32

“You look different, all the time now,” Baelfire said one day, mending a bit of tack he’d brought with him. Ian, Jaime, and Evan shrieked and giggled as they tumbled on the lawn outside.

The grass was a notion Rumplestiltskin had borrowed from the other land, grain grown solely for ornament, kept tamed by magic. There were trees in the west kitchen gardens that Belle had not yet discovered. He’d keep their names a secret until they bore fruit, if he was lucky.

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

Baelfire took his hand and examined it. “Yeah, I thought so,” he said in satisfaction. His brown eyes, a mirror of his father’s before the curse, raised to his face. He tilted his head.

“Will you let me look at you, out in the sun?”

“Bae….”

“Just a hunch, okay?”

He closed his eyes. Baelfire was one of the last people likely to ridicule him, but the fear was old and ingrained. He let his son draw him to his feet and lead him not to the windows but outside, clutching his hand all the while, as though _he_ were the child.

Out here, his pupils contracted to pinpricks. He shrunk into himself, his shoulders hunching, his eyes slitted against the light.

Baelfire’s hand was gentle under his chin, lifting his face to the sun. Rumplestiltskin swallowed down the fear. It was so little, what his son wanted. He didn’t want the easy life he could offer him, or any of the wealth available.

Baelfire smiled, pleased. Pleased with _him_. “Very different, Papa. What happened?”

His racing heart beginning to slow its anxious pace, he shook his head. “You happened?” He smiled weakly, grasping Baelfire’s hand and pulling it away. One could only stare into the sun for so long. “You and Belle and the rest of our family.”

Evan toddled into his knees. Rumplestiltskin swept him up into the air, making the little boy laugh with glee.

It was warm out here, but not the way it would be elsewhere. It would never get hot in this place between the mountains, or retain the heat through the nights.

The winters would be harsh.

Evan tried to buss his cheek, and he dodged, ready for it now.

His fingers went to his lips, then to Evan’s cheek. The boy wasn’t old enough to understand.

Evan pouted, his tiny nose wrinkling with unhappiness.

Then he mimicked the gesture, and patted Rumplestiltskin’s pebbled cheek.

Baelfire rescued them both. It would distress Evan if he were to see his grandfather cry.

He scooped him from Rumplestiltskin’s arms, tickling him. “Go, play,” he said.

Evan ran off, blissfully unaware.

Baelfire wrapped an arm around Rumplestiltskin's shoulders and guided him back inside.

There was only so much he could bear of the sun.

~

Her morning sickness passed, he and Belle set about making the castle theirs in every sense.

Belle had not forgotten the rings set into the walls in the dungeon, nor the control she’d promised to help him learn. They didn’t have occasion to venture down there often these days, dry roofs aplenty in the upper parts of their castle.

He was hard before they started, her hand on his arm, each movement of his trousers a torment on his cock. It did no good to attempt to wear him out before beginning.

She carried a pouch of coins in her other hand, the various minted currencies obsolete now. He levitated the first of them in the middle of their cell, his dark magic buoying it. Child’s play, at the moment. She placed the others on the floor, jingling in the quiet of their refuge.

When she looked up at the wall, one of the higher rings boasted a heavy pulley threaded with thick rope, one end neatly spliced around a larger ring the breadth of his hand, the other cleated off in a loose figure eight.

A set of manacles, sized to fit himself, hung ready from the upper horn of that cleat.

She turned to him, and he swallowed, lust and nerves and uncertainty. She preferred to choose rope and decorative metals, her ribbons and the stays of her dresses, even occasionally tying back his hair so that she might better see his face.

A chest of these things now occupied a corner of their rooms, but his creation was made of the same ugly black iron he’d used that day in their pavillion.

He ducked his head; she raised his chin. She’d had a way of looking at him, right before she’d kiss him, the way she would reach for him, her breath sweet across his.

She knew better; they knew better, but she still looked at him this way, held his head and bit him where her fingers had been, hard enough to bruise.

He whined, hips canting into her rounded belly, reverent hands upon her waist.

Her teeth released him. She watched the marks fade.

“This is what you want?” she asked.

“I’m yours,” he replied, and she cupped his cheek.

“I’m going to do my very best to distract you,” she threatened, as intimidating as a kitten.

He grinned. “I’m counting on it.”

She snorted, took his wrist in her hands. She found the buttons on his sleeves to be decorative only.

“Rumple.”

He smiled, and fixed them.

She unbuttoned them, peeled back the silk to expose his mottled skin. She kissed him where his pulse rushed, and his breath left his lungs.

Lamb’s wool, she insisted upon, wrapped it around him with her own hands, then clamped the metal over it, the clasps grating shut. She threaded the second cuff through the large ring and secured his other wrist in the same fashion.

Before she could step away and reach for the rope trailing from the cleat, he trapped her head between his bent elbows, savored the scent of her, the scrape of metal harsh in his ears.

She pressed into him, his lips at her hairline. “I’m not going far, Rumple.”

He nodded, released her.

She raised his hands enough that the links would not tangle in his hair, and tied the rope off again.

She hadn’t asked him to remove their clothing. His trousers, not loose to start with, were now painfully tight, the leather compressing his erection.

If he rolled his pelvis just right, he might achieve some friction, except… he cursed the silk he’d lined them with, that slid along his flesh like water.

The first brush of her fingers there sent her coin _ping_ ing to the floor, bright copper flashing in the autumn light from the high window.

His face burned with his failure.

Her palm warm upon his cheek, she comforted him. “You’ve no one to compete with, my love, only yourself.”

He turned his head, kissed her hand.

“Again?”

~

And again, a second and third coin joining the first in the air, then more, multi-coloured metals catching the light and scattering it about the walls in a myriad of tiny reflections.

The next time the coins fell, they hit the stone with a solid _clunk_.

Perplexed, Belle ceased her attentions, and arched an eyebrow. There was a smear of come on her cheek.

His head fell back against the wall.

She glanced over her shoulder and frowned, bent to scoop up the lump he’d melded into one large whole.

Her lovely mouth quirking, she held it up to him.

He winced. “I didn’t know I’d done that.”

“Do you want to stop?” she asked him gently.

Sweat dripped down inside his shirt. He shook his head. In her hands, the pieces separated, misshapen coins lifting to hover behind her.

“I’m proud of you,” she told him.

His hair had fallen in his eyes; he peered at her from behind its curtain, melted when she nuzzled his jawline with her nose.

It no longer astonished him when she said things like this, but sometimes he thought he’d misheard. It would be unseemly to ask her to repeat them; he hadn’t deserved it the first time.

“Very proud,” she said firmly.

As a lad he’d seen a bull, the weight of ten men, with a ring through its nose that a child could use to direct its movements, were it so inclined.

Rumplestiltskin would follow Belle anywhere.

He turned his head and lapped slowly at the smear he’d left on her, the salt of her skin, the flavour of himself mingling over the flat of his tongue. His cock ached, never mind that he should be worn to the bone by now.

By all rights he should not even be part of the waking world, were he a normal man.

Her hand wrapped around him.

~

Again, until his legs no longer held him, and bright metals danced in the air surrounding them, stripped of their tarnished patinas. They shone as though newly minted.

“Enough,” she said. She was pleased with him.

He twitched, the coins swirling to land in the pouch on the floor with a musical series of clicks. His magic stretched, the tension of his task falling away as if it had never been.

He basked in her approval.

She stepped away to unwind the thick rope holding him up, and his knees buckled.

He fell to the floor, iron clanking over him. The rope in her hands whipped once, and he heard her cry in alarm. She caught it before his weighted arms could hit his head.

He sagged against the stone. Lower, until the links laid behind his neck and snagged at his hair.

She wound the rope in the cleat again, and then her skirts swished about his knees.

Up from heavy-lidded eyes, he watched her. She untangled his damp hair, cupped the back of his skull in her hands.

He shivered at the tickle. His elbows splayed open, his fingers curling and uncurling. He wanted her on his tongue, the only lips he could kiss. It had been too long since he’d last tasted her.

“Do you know why we left these layers on today?” she asked him.

He’d wanted to see her, but it would have made his attempts so much more difficult.

Her skirts billowed as she knelt over his knees, the fabric soft on his bared flesh. Her hands on his wrist, he heard the latch grate open. She unwound the sweat-soaked wool, inspected his skin for damage.

“I would not have been able to focus on you as you needed, Rumple.”

He wanted her.

“May I see you?” he begged her.

Her smile was warmth and light. She unlatched his second wrist, checked it as she had the first.

The iron clattered on the stone beside them.

“Yes, my love.”

Switching from dark magic was not easy, and it took him a moment to gather his scattered wits.

His reward was her, every inch of her as he’d longed for this past hour. Her clothing lay upon their bed upstairs, as fresh as she’d put it on that morning.

She kissed his hair. “I would see you as well,” she told him.

It was a relief to banish his own clothing, his damp skin slick under her thighs. Their blankets upon the floor, he laid her down amongst pillows and sought out his quarry, lush upon his lips, over his cheeks, and down his chin.

Again, until she dragged him up and demanded more of him.

~

“Why did you include closures on these chains, and not in our pavilion?” she asked, holding him close.

He could send everything away with a thought. He doesn’t like to, he has discovered.

“I am still learning,” he told her. “I will spend the rest of our lives learning us, if you will permit me.”

Her fingers brushed over his lips.

“I don’t suppose you ever met an elephant?” he asked. She would surely laugh at him if she knew the trend his thoughts had taken not so long ago.

“I’ve read of them. Aren’t they…?”

“Some of the largest creatures in any land,” he said. “Large enough to trample cavalry, or fling it about like toys.

“When a calf is still relatively young, its trainers will tether it to the ground. It will pull and fight, but because it is still small, it can’t break free.

“Then when it is grown, it thinks it still can’t, and never tries again.”

Belle frowned. Her empathy was one of her greatest strengths.

“If a man were to willingly give himself over to his wife--”

He shot her an impish grin.

“--nay, beg for the privilege, to be tethered when he could not break free, would he wish to destroy the illusion when he could?”

She chewed her lip. “But how strong is that illusion, Rumple?”

“The tiniest, gossamer threads,” he said regretfully.

“You’d like to preserve it.”

His thumb down the line of her jaw.

“If my lady would allow.”

~

Rumplestiltskin traded for books. Rumour had it that if one wanted the mage’s assistance, the best way to get it was by collecting a decent library, the more obscure the better. Books soon formed a nebulous underground market (even for the illiterate), sought and traded and bartered as currency.

“They called this ‘crowdsourcing,’ back in the other land,” he said, presenting Belle with his latest of acquisitions.

Baelfire thought the situation hilarious.

~

Travel in the mountains became nigh impossible once winter set in. For visitors, at any rate. Perhaps that was why the location had been abandoned so many years ago.

The snows did little to keep them two of them there, but meant that no one arrived unannounced.

They took full advantage of this.

~

“I have to go away today,” he told her one morning, snowdrifts piled high outside their castle walls.

He didn’t want to. He didn’t like how he disappointed her when he ventured outside of their family’s protective influence

Belle traced his chest with a finger, thoughtful lines and patterns. He shivered at that touch. It always meant good things.

Her smile for him was warm. “I have an idea.”

She was back in a moment, carrying a thin rope like those they’d purchased from a grocery store in Maine.

“No silk?” he teased her.

“I want you to feel this.”

Seated in their bed, her nightgown sheer over her, she wrapped his chest in unrelenting cotton, the rope rubbing him in a way that silk never would.

Tighter, until it restricted the expansion of his lungs and altered his breathing.

His head tilted back; his body straightened. She tightened the ropes again.

“Not too much?” she asked him, her fingers digging underneath, weaving strands that reached below his chest and anchored over his shoulders.

Small breaths, each a bright flare. He had to focus to keep his magic from interfering. It would remove her work on a whim, send it into nothingness.

“I won’t even get sore,” he said regretfully.

Dryly, awkwardly crawling behind him to weave in the ends, “That’s not a good thing.”

She understood him.

“I trust you can hide this under clothing?”

“I’m to go out like this?” He couldn’t. Every moment would be a struggle, magic fighting to escape his grasp.

Her fists wrapped in the ropes; she pulled him flush against her, breasts and rounded belly, hooked her chin over his shoulder, the curve of her cheek at his jaw.

Lace pressed in fine ripples over his spine.

“No one else will know,” she said. “You will know, and you will not forget.”

He was going to spend the day hard as a rock, dependent on illusion to preserve his dignity. He whined. His head lolled against her shoulder, his pelvis canting.

She caressed the ropes she’d wrapped him in. “Return to me soon, and I will take this off of you.”

Down his abdomen, firmly over the vulnerable flesh.

Burn and tension. “Not right away, I hope.”

Her cheek rubbed over his. “We’ll see.”

~

One danger mitigated, another dilemma in its place.

“I forgot the illusion, for a moment today,” he confessed.

Rope lay discarded by the bed, any marks he’d carried long gone.

“Did anyone see?”

“No, but Belle, what if I can’t maintain the focus I need to keep that hidden?”

She frowned.

“This--” he placed her hand over himself “--is yours. Everything I am is yours, and….”

Her fingers curled over him. “I don’t share.”

They would never finish this conversation if she continued to hold him like that. She withdrew her hand from his cock, but laced her fingers with his.

Relief and disappointment mingled in him.

Thoughtfully, she said, “I suppose we could find a non-magical answer.”

A flash of memory, and he swallowed. It wouldn’t hurt--unless he wanted it to. He could make it not hurt. Another had not had that option.

He avoided her eyes, but she knew him.

“What are you thinking?”

His mouth dry, he said, “There was a man--a Dark One, many years ago, whose dagger was stolen from him.”

They all were, eventually.

“The man who took it, he--” Rumplestiltskin couldn’t tell her that, or how commonly it happened. “He did horrible things, to him.”

And eventually the dagger was stolen from him in turn. But every Dark One remembered. Every slave leashed, the details of every end.

“He wasn’t content just to… to cause pain.”

Though there had been plenty of that.

Belle said what he could not. “He humiliated him.”

Her horror soothed something in him, something older than himself, the weight of years no longer as oppressive as they’d been.

If Belle thought the man’s treatment was unjust, then perhaps people like him did not merit it. Perhaps he himself did not deserve the ill that came his way.

As distantly as he could, he whispered, “It is possible to become hard without any desire involved at all.”

Her hand tightened over his. “Rumple, how awful.”

There was more.

His hand safe in hers, he braced himself and gestured.

Full, engorged attention, painful and a hair from ejaculation. Even though he’d been expecting it, he gasped and bucked.

Alarmed and aroused all at the same time, she stared.

He could smell her.

Another gesture, this one abrupt, and the erection wilted. He winced, and laid his forehead against their joined hands while he caught his breath.

He was fortunate that emotion did not accompany the memories. He didn’t want to know what it was like to develop an erection in front of someone who despised him.

“You can quench it with magic,” she said.

His voice sounded ragged to his own ears. “Normally, yes. I… don’t like to.”

He smiled wanly and raised his head. “Now imagine you had the power to command that of someone.”

Her voice was small. “You wanted to give me that.”

He kissed her knuckles. “I would have trusted you with it.”

He had trusted her with it, as dangerous as it was. Twice, and she had not betrayed that trust.

She wanted to be held, then, and it was some time before she asked, “Is there something from those particular memories that might aid us in today’s dilemma?”

And there it was. He’d got himself in this far.

It would have been a simple matter to place the necessary rings, one in the perineum behind, the other down through the slit in the head. It would even be painless, as he wasn’t interested in pain that was not caused by her, but he knew she would not approve.

He was hers, and so he only told her instead.

Her eyes got very big.

“You can put things _in_ there?”

His mouth opened, closed, but she was already on to the next bit of the puzzle.

“You chain the rings together to prevent the erection from rising?”

He grinned, impishly, “Or tie them with ribbon, as my lady pleases.”

Her ribbons, satin fluttering from his cock. He swallowed.

But she shook her head. “Rumplestiltskin, pain makes you hard. I don’t want to injure you.”

She loved him.

“Pain that _you_ give me makes me hard.”

Exasperated, she argued, “I would be causing it. I want a reminder for you, not a distraction.”

He’d been quite distracted today, but he wasn’t going to point that out.

In the end she improvised. After much studied fondling, and several interruptions to make his cock go soft again, she declared herself satisfied with the result.

It looked like part of his collection of instruments in the last dungeon downstairs, but wrought of gold, and most pleasing, she said, to the eye.

He pleased her.

~


	33. Chapter 33

In the wake of the ogres, the population boomed overnight.

Rumplestiltskin said it had happened before, in the land where she’d met him, after a long war. Staggered generations became a thing of the past there, a gap of years preceding a group of children all born within the same time span.

It was said that men who had been without company for prolonged periods tended to have higher fertility rates, he told her, but he didn’t know if it was true.

She glanced between Edelweiss sleeping in the mahogany cradle and her husband, who leant on the back of her chair, peering down over her shoulder.

He grinned.

How could someone be smug and bashful all at the same time? He managed it, somehow.

She closed her book, rose and circled behind him. “Is that so?”

She pressed his front into the heavy wingback set before the fire. The nights were still cold, even the days chilly up here in the mountains.

“Care to demonstrate?” she asked, her hand flat on his sternum, her hips pressing into his rear.

He blushed. Blushed! After all this time, he still blushed at these things. “Wouldn’t work, while you’re still nursing,” he said, ducking his head and turning.

She allowed him just enough room, and crowded him back again. “I’m sure it works just fine,” she assured him, his breath now hot on her mouth.

Too close, too dangerous. She nosed his chin and sought out his throat, exposed for her as she’d requested months ago, and bit him just under his jaw.

They did this instead of kissing. If it wasn’t for his magic, he would have a permanent layer of marks all over his neck.

She felt him swallow convulsively against her tongue, and his chin lifted further, deliciously inviting.

“If the lady asks…” he said.

She licked his pulse in broad stripes, making him whine and rock against her. She stilled his hips with her hands, her mouth now at his ear. “I do.”

The laces of his trousers started to unravel, and she stepped back from him in gentle rebuke. She knew the difference by now, felt the cold of dark magic when he reached for it.

“My way, Rumple.”

She asked this of him at the most difficult times now. He’d got the hang of it, but it was these moments when he was most distracted that she honed his skill.

She loved to watch him attempt it, even as he panted with strain, the effort bringing sweat to his skin. The laces freed him, and she tilted his face to reach the salty drops that gathered on his temple.

“Very nice,” she praised him.

He shuddered with pleasure, her tongue playing in the creases of an eyelid. The control needed for the magic had calmed him some.

She switched with him, leaning on the chair with a contented sigh.

The dresses she wore since giving birth were made for easy access so she could feed Edelweiss without too much fuss. Rumplestiltskin deftly undid the straps and slid his hands inside her blouse, his textured fingers rolling her nipples between them.

She leaked, now, when stimulated so, dampening the fabric. She was immensely glad they’d ceased the painful tenderness she’d experienced not so long ago.

She’d have to change again. Later.

Her breasts had got larger with pregnancy and nursing, and appeared to fascinate him more than ever. He smeared her milk over her, stroking under them, his erection fitting into the curves of her rear.

Oh gods. She’d calmed him too much, and now he wanted to tease her.

“Rumple!”

His chest shook against her back. He was laughing.

Enough of this. She lifted her skirts herself, struggling to raise them between his hips and her rear.

“Now, Rumplestiltskin,” she demanded.

He got her drawers undone--how, she neither knew nor cared. Another time. She eagerly spread her legs, her centre clenching on nothing.

She muffled her shout as he slid in. Waking the baby right now would be very, very bad.

~

After the spring planting, invitations went out by messenger bird. Fowl of all feathers carried the missives, some doves, some red-breasted robins, some iridescent mallard ducks.

A tiny bluebird visited Snow and her family, picking through breadcrumbs. It stayed.

They had breadcrumbs to spare now.

In Sherwood Forest, a shy red woodpecker alit on Daniel’s resting axe, its crest flicking anxiously at him. It dropped the gilded envelope and hastened out of sight.

In the island kingdom, a thick-feathered pelican disgorged Ariel’s invitation into her lap, seaweed dragging from one foot, and stole the bacon from the serving platter on her breakfast table.

There would be a ball--the first of its kind in many years--held in the castle nestled between mountains, to celebrate the birth of the lord’s infant daughter.

And hadn’t the wording of _that_ required great tact. The land was still recovering from ogres; no one had the resources for the attire Belle remembered. Sebastian had set his hand to it, though, and the invitations went out.

~

The south gate appeared deserted to each guest who arrived. Many who came alone paused uncertainly in the entrance, admiring those further within but hesitant to enter, their eyes or their hands drifting self-consciously over their own garments.

Belle pointed these out to Rumplestiltskin, Edelweiss in her arms.

Some would have turned back, were on the very brink of doing so.

That was when a warm breeze would tug at them, white light leaving moderate finery in its wake.

She and Rumplestiltskin made a game of it. 

Not too much, she cautioned. The fabrics were plain enough, but her husband had a gift for making beautiful things from the humblest of goods.

Delight sparkled in his eyes with each success.

She egged him on, her pride in him all the reward he wanted. Difficult as the light magic was for him, he had a bottomless well of it, and seldom tired. Not for a few fripperies made this way, he assured her.

Dark magic punished either the wielder or those it benefited. It was easier in the short run, but a harsh collector in the end… and it always collected its due.

More than one young woman dissolved into tears.

Belle took them aside, soothed them and welcomed them. Then she introduced them to her husband and sent them on.

“Midnight, and the magic’s gone,” she warned them all. At least they would get some sleep tonight. She had a feeling that these guests would be the ones who would want to stay the longest. She would keep an eye on them.

This was how they met Jefferson and his daughter.

~

He’d left her at home with friends. He was just going to look, he’d said. See who, see where, bring her stories.

He lurked in the gate, and puzzled Belle. He showed no disappointment, as the others had, merely curiosity.

Then he smiled and walked away.

~

Rumplestiltskin stole their daughter back from her, the proudest papa Belle had ever seen. He never would have noticed their guests arriving now, were it not for her watchful eye.

“That one, Rumple.”

He looked where she indicated, conspiratorial in the game.

“Green, do you think?” He tilted his head.

“That does suit her.”

~

The sun set, dusk to dark in the space of moments. Night as black as pitch fell, dazzling in its stark emptiness.

But only for a moment. Half of a breathless pause, and torches flared to life around the grounds, first from the castle, then racing, one after the other down the path, faster than human hands could carry them.

Here and there, some torches flared blue, and green, and red, one a glorious magenta, another violet.

Their guests now inside, the only persons present were the three of them, the drama private and for her alone.

Rumplestiltskin offered her his arm then, and they left the gate for the ballroom he’d created for her, its arches ablaze with candles in high chandeliers, its wide floor merry with dancers.

They’d worked hard these past months, resurrecting a land ravaged by war, rebuilding, repairing, restoring.

An entire generation had grown up without learning the steps, young women who trod their partners’ toes, young men who collided with their peers.

They kept the dance numbers simple. It was part of rebuilding.

Rumplestiltskin claimed her first dance.

And then the last, as their guests departed, hastened on their way by an indeterminate sense of urgency.

In the family quarters warded from intrusion, Ian and Evan had long since been put to bed. Belle turned in his arms, leaning into him as the others came over.

They were seldom all together anymore. She’d missed this, the closeness of them.

John with his new bride, who hung back to make room.

Baelfire with Morraine, who carried Edelweiss and returned her to Belle. Belle felt Rumplestiltskin’s weight shift, and pulled his arm tighter around her.

“Too much dancing?” she teased him.

His laugh rumbled against her. “Never enough.”

His arm crossed over her, cupped the back of their daughter’s tiny head, and held the two of them close.

~

“It was winter,” Rumplestiltskin said, later that night. Edelweiss slept between them, Belle’s nightgown loose about her chest. She hadn’t retied it.

Even his magic couldn’t shut out all of the drafts. She wore nightgowns to bed in this land; he revelled in her acceptance and slept bare.

She touched his back, where the scars rode low on his ribs.

“This?”

He thought he could tell her now. Her hand on his memories no longer disquieted him, hadn’t for some time.

“Aye.”

Their daughter safe between them, the cows, the snow, and the caged seer-child seemed less real, more distant than they ever had. Yet as he told her, they came to life, haunted him once more.

 _Water_.

He’d told Milah only the barest shade of this.

 _Give me... water_.

Everything hurt more in the cold.

~

Edelweiss slept through the whole of it, her tiny hand wrapped around his finger, his wrist nestled between his wife’s breasts in the dark.

It was easier, somehow, to tell her terrible things where she could not see him. He could see her, her unfocused, troubled gaze a balm for his fears.

She’d been stroking along his side, up and down his flank, over and over again. There were times when she’d pause, and then her hand would resume, slow, unhurried, over his cursed skin.

“The bones didn’t set well after all that, did they?” she asked at last, the first she’d spoken in some time.

The day Wendy broke her arm, he’d been a wreck. Not long after, Baelfire had talked him into that first visit to a podiatrist. The films had made his stomach churn.

Still, he smiled. “It was worth it.”

Her hand flattened against his hip, and then began once more.

“Does Bae know, Rumple?” Hastily, “Not _that_ … but why you did it?”

“He didn’t need to.”

In any case, his son was far too quick to defend him. It would have got them both into trouble.

Up his side, his shoulder, and over his hair. Belle understood him. More than that, she _believed_ him. Milah would have… best not to consider that.

His voice as small as he’d ever heard it, he said, “I used to think that kind of thing was something that only happened to women.”

Across the curve of his shoulder, the tips of her fingers wandering down his arm.

“So did I, up til tonight.”

She must have felt his sudden stillness, for her hand returned to his hair, cupped the back of his head. “Don’t apologise to me, Rumple.”

After a moment, he nodded, turned and kissed the arm that slanted across him. She followed his lips to find them with her hand, and lingered there.

The experience of that night echoed in jarring conflict with the memories that had come with his curse. They had been educational, to say the least.

Subdued, he said, “It can be pleasurable, with more care.”

“What!?”

He’d never thought he’d be able to laugh about anything associated with that night, but she was blushing, bright red, and eyed the direction of his face doubtfully, as though he might be having fun at her expense.

He’d felt it, strangled under the tearing, a flare that surprised him, his sobbing gasp. If he’d been told, he would have thought someone was winding him up as well.

Ruefully, “Did you never wonder what recourse two men might have in the bedroom?”

“Before or after I met you?”

He snorted.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” she said, more seriously.

It felt good to make light of so painful a subject. Reluctant to return to sobriety, he quipped, “There are many things I don’ understand.”

She made a face at him. “Rumple.”

He smirked, unrepentant.

Her hand found his mouth, and the smirk. She smiled, but asked, “If you went through… all that, why do you…?”

“Like the things that I do?”

Her thumb pressed his cheek against his teeth, a reminder.

His lips curved; he licked her thumb.

“Because I _can_ choose them.”

She shook her head. “Do you know how extraordinary you are? That experience would have destroyed most people.”

How did one even begin to respond to something like that?

She found the furrow between his brows, read him with her fingers.

Softly she said, “This has plagued you for a long time, Rumple.”

A century and more, but her tone was even, neutral, and he could read no disapproval in it.

“I’m afraid I’m stuck with it.”

His wrist still between her breasts, he felt her reply, “Perhaps not. I would rid you of it, if I could, or at least some of it.”

They had left the hypothetical for the here and now. Fragile hope rose at her words.

“How?”

She bit her lip. “If we were to use elements of that day--”

He withdrew from her, gently untangled Edelweiss, and she stopped.

“We’ve never evoked fear, in our magic practice,” he said. “I don’t know what would happen.”

That wasn’t right. He _did_ know; his magic responded to fear with a ravenous hunger.

“Rumple.”

She found his hand, blindly in the dark. She didn’t press, but held him, and waited. When the sound of his breathing slowed, she whispered,

“I want better for you than this.”

He wanted to tell her it wasn’t possible, but she persisted.

“If there is any chance that we can weaken the link between fear and your magic, we should.”

She thought they could. The silence stretched; he examined her face in the dark. Sometimes even Belle forgot that he could see her despite lack of light. Her compassion and empathy stood naked, on full display.

Everything hurt more in the cold.

He brought her hand to his mouth, kissed it. “Forgive my unseemly dismissal, my lady. I spoke in haste.”

She smiled, that gentle affection she reserved just for family, for him. The tip of her finger rubbed inside the corner of his mouth.

“There is nothing to forgive. We will do nothing you don’t want, Rumple.”

Wonder of wonders, she meant it, and he knew she would stand by her promise.

“I would hear you out.”

From his mouth to the apple of his cheek, the curls that fell loose over his ear. His cartilage between her damp fingers, she explored him by touch.

Slowly, she began, “ _If_ we were to use elements of that day, and mix them with things more… pleasant, we might lessen their power over you.”

She was scratching at his scalp now, and it wasn’t fair; it felt good. He wanted to purr.

“They called that ‘desensitization,’ in the other land.”

Her lips moved; she rolled the word over, picked it apart, even as the back of her fingers progressed down the side of his neck.

Teasingly he offered, “There was at least one psychology text in that lot we brought over.”

Nothing distracted Belle like books, but she would not be deterred. Her hand settled over the bear’s marks.

“May I try, Rumple?”

She believed in him, and he could not deny her.

“I am at your disposal, Madam.”

Her hand to her lips, then his, slightly off-target in the dark. He wanted her mouth, with a deep ache that could never be filled any other way. He settled for taking her hand and setting the tip of her longest finger between his teeth, closed his lips around her.

Her pupils, large already, dilated further; her mouth opened, and her tongue peeked out, played along her lips.

He could smell her, a new scent added to that which was uniquely Belle, one that he was intimately familiar with.

One that he craved.

He sucked at her in open invitation, hoping. He needed her.

She swallowed, and the finger slid inside, under his tongue. Down past the first knuckle, she hooked it in the vee of his jaw, pulled him in to bury her lips in his hair.

The gesture went straight to his cock; he moaned. Her warm approval curved against his head.

Muffled, “Belle, pwease.”

The finger dug under his teeth, a bruising possessive pain that had him whining and crawling to his knees, their sleeping daughter between his arms. She would not sleep for long if they continued like this.

His magic protested; he fought it back. He wanted this, wanted more, and it would not be stolen from him.

All too soon, Belle released him. The bedside candle lit as she rose, her tumbling curls lush in its glow. His mouth, vacant of her, hung loose. Belatedly, he closed it and swallowed the saliva that had gathered there.

She squinted in the growing light; her hand rested on his head. “A moment, my love.”

He watched her move Edelweiss to the warded safety of her cradle, shushing her softly when she stirred.

She was safe. He felt the wards embrace her, the strongest light magic his blood and Belle’s could harness, rooted in the woodgrain of his daughter’s cradle, a bevy of Baelfire’s carved roses disguising the runes. The magic pulsed like a living thing in his senses.

His mouth was Belle’s, reclaimed, her thumb wedged into his jaw, his head pulled down toward the edge of the bed where she stood. His elbows in the blankets, his arse in the air, she reached under him, found his nipple and tweaked it.

His whine rose higher; his legs spread.

She knelt, brushed his curls to the side and covered his bared neck with her hand.

He was safe.

Her thumb hooked behind his teeth was his, his abject surrender hers.

She protected him, and brought him lower still, until his head hung down to the level of her chest, and rested there.

And then a moment where he could not breathe.

A position similar to this, the tent where the officers took their meals, that endless night. The mallet they dropped in the dirt before him, the dull _thump_ as it hit the ground.

Magic crawled beneath his skin, terror like acid in his throat.

“Rumplestiltskin.”

Her voice called him back. Her hand rubbed firmly between his shoulderblades, over the old scars, up his spine, and down. Gradually, his rapid breathing slowed.

Her thumb moved up, put welcome pressure over his tongue. He trembled in her hand; her other left his back to stroke outside his mouth, encouraging. Frozen in memory, she woke him gently from its grip.

Outside, stormclouds calmed, their electric charge returning in a trickle to the earth.

His saliva dripped down her wrist.

Mortified, he tried to pull away, but her hand was in his hair now, and wouldn’t let him. Tighter, and he whined.

His magic crouched ready; it would push her from him. 

“No.” The word settled over his shoulders like a cloak, and sheltered him.

He shoved the magic back.

“You are mine,” she said, oblivious to his inner quarrel. “I don’t share, and I certainly don’t share with them.”

He sobbed, a strange hiccuping sound. His lips closed loosely around her, the petite width of her thumb’s base comforting in his mouth.

Her pleased murmur, and he sucked her, tentatively at first, then harder.

They hadn’t bothered to tie him until later, each involuntary scrambling movement instantly discouraged by fresh agony awakened in his ruined foot.

The handle was thick and blunt, but smooth from wear, the only mercy it possessed. By the time they brought it to bear, not even his fear could move him to attempt escape.

Her thumb in his mouth switched for her other, and it was coated in her juices. He moaned.

Where fear did nothing, panic did.

Her hand left his mouth bereft. He whimpered, and tried to follow, but she pressed him back into the bed, rose on her knees and rubbed circles up the slope of his back. Her side nesting in the crook of neck and shoulder, she weighed his cock in her hand, played the foreskin between her fingers.

Then as she had that day in their pavilion, she demanded information of him.

She wanted to talk, and he grew harder by the second.

Her touch on his back neither sped nor slowed, steady, reassuring, and altogether at odds with his increasing need.

His balls rolling in her palm, she hesitated.

“Rumple... when you said that there were things you might never be able to do, was this one of them?”

She _would_ ask.

It had been then. Now… he wasn’t so sure.

Her thumb found a spot between and pressed, separating the two.

His hips jerked; she held him fast. The motion pulled at him. He yelped, and the pain was so very different from that night.

That flash of surprised pleasure had been more terrifying than anything else that had occurred.

Laughter, but it hadn’t happened again.

“I know it can be good, Belle. I _remember_ it being good--for others.”

A part of him wanted to feel it, just once, to know that the possibility had not been taken from him.

Who was he kidding? The part of his brain that thought with his cock wanted to feel it, and more than once.

There was no rhyme or reason; he wanted.

Gold would not be a currency again here for many years, despite the progress they’d made, but it was lovely, and she sat back on her heels to caress the back of his neck, her cheek in his hair.

“It’s heavy,” she said, admiring the length in her lap. It was twin to hers, down to the dent in the side from the time she'd dropped it and refused to let him repair it.

He smiled, pleased that she was pleased. “It’s hollow.”

She scratched at his scalp.

“I’m to start with something this big?” She sounded doubtful.

It was no larger than the other, the one he’d crafted to satisfy her when he couldn’t. Something ridiculously male in his ego glowed. He knew it was silly, but he desperately wanted to be enough for her.

However--

“I won’t be able to see you,” he complained. He would lose himself, without that.

Her hand rubbed up over his back, thoughtful.

“It was cold, wasn’t it?”

The ground was frozen, clinging mud where it thawed. The mess tent was relatively dry, the drafts fewer, blocked by canvas, the bite of the wind lesser, but cold, yes, the bared flesh of his arse halfway numb.

Everything hurt more in the cold.

~

They left the door to the bathing room open, Edelweiss’ cradle within view. His cock bobbing with each movement, he crawled after her, and knelt while the wide basin filled.

As much as he was able to give her, she preferred the human things, and offered him her hand. Perhaps it was a habit that lingered from the short time she’d known him in the other land, when she'd been the strength of a crippled man, more literally, but no less so than now.

He took her hand, and let her lead him into the water.

She did not sit with him, but knelt up between his spread knees and folded his arms behind him. Her knees forced his legs apart; his arms kept him bent.

Her hand went between her legs, and she moaned. His mouth watered at the sight of her, salivated at the smell.

His curls in her fist, she smeared her juices under his nose, fed them to him on her fingers. Again and again, she painted his face, thickest around his nose where he couldn’t reach to lick it off, her hand pausing occasionally to thrust deep inside herself, or rub the heel over her clit.

Too much--he could see the strain in her. He knew she focused on him to the extent that she neglected her own pleasure.

“I want to see you come, Belle. Please?”

Her cry was high, her thighs strained.

Her hand left his hair to brace upon his shoulder. Water sloshed, spilled.

“The angle’s wrong,” she said.

Her fingers thrusting in his mouth, her flavour rich on his tongue. Up the side of his nose, sticky-slick liquid worked into his eyebrow.

“Let me,” he pleaded.

Slack, her eyes unfocused. Her hand jerked, her hips canted. In the throes of orgasm, her mouth trembled, begging for his.

Something inside him screamed.

He was silent, watching her. After a moment, she lifted her hand, glistening, to his mouth.

~

The heat soaked into his bones, even the cool ledge he leant upon, the room warm and bringing sweat to their skin.

Submerged in the taste and smell of her, her affection in his ears, he heard her take up the jar of oil he’d offered her, and hesitate.

His cock suddenly less demanding than it had been, apprehension twisted in his stomach. Magic rippled through his mind, tossed in the new-leafed trees outside. He quelled it.

“Just go slow,” he said, his muscles tensing. Belle shouldn’t have to… but there were fingers at his entrance, not the cold and unforgiving metal he’d expected.

She was touching him _there_ , and it shook him.

One hand on the back of his neck, she pressed his head down to the ledge, held him there. His breath trapped between his face and the stone, the scent of her seemed stronger, more potent than before.

Oil, what he hadn’t had then.

The tip of one finger gently breached him, and her hand released his neck, rubbed firmly down the length of his spine, away. He stayed where she’d put him, and she murmured her approval.

Inside, and he heard a small gasp, a shifting of limbs behind him. She stretched him carefully, the similarities to that horrible night receding in his mind.

Her hand returned, rubbed over the small of his back. She was waiting for him, he realized. Her fingers held him open, intimate, but no further.

Nothing but the smell of her, the steam from the water, the cool stone, her hands, the sound of his breath, her breath, and their daughter asleep in her cradle.

“Please,” he whispered.

She kissed his back, just where the halves of his arse met.

The head was warm. She’d been sitting on it? It travelled slowly, stretching him as it went.

She’d had it in her, and he’d never known.

Angled, and stars burst across his vision.

His cock, previously uncertain of their plans, abruptly surged to life.

~


	34. Chapter 34

The middle of the night, his lips grazing her forehead.

“I’m sorry,” he said when she woke. “I have to go out.”

The golden sheath glinted in his hand, soft reflections of the lone candle by their bedside.

“Would you….”

It was so difficult not to kiss him when he asked her for this, even woken from a sound sleep as she was.

He shivered at her touch. They hadn’t time for more pleasurable ways to make him soft again; he tensed, and magic forced the excess blood away, pain-lines deepening at the corners of his eyes.

Some days they were smile lines, others graven; they formed the same tributary patterns. Her hand cupped his cheek, her thumb smoothing over them.

“It feels horrible to do that,” he said, his cock now flaccid for her.

But it was lovely to watch, only better if she could taste it from his mouth. He knew, she thought, the knowledge written in the way his eyes fastened onto her lips.

It was wrong to want to see, to taste.

There was regret there as well; he glanced down, placed the sheath in her hand. As lovely as he was, she would not make him repeat the effort.

In this land his body recovered faster than she would have ever thought possible, and so she worked quickly. When he was safely tucked inside, completely unable to rise in response, she caressed the exposed head, all nerve endings and velvet, and dug her thumbnail into the slit.

He hissed; she wanted him.

She wanted his mouth, pliant and yielding under hers. On her. All the tenacious devotion she knew him capable of, in her.

If she’d started with the rope first, the spell he’d used would have been so much more of an ordeal for him. She wondered what was so urgent that he would employ it at all.

He touched her mouth.

They had time for this, he assured her. Please?

Her hand to her lips, then his.

The centre of rope, the loop over his head, down his front and under him, either side of his cock. Up between his legs, the halves of his rear, the long ends through the loop.

Tight, and he arched into it.

Around, through the double strands, and back, zig-zagging across his sides, diamonds up his torso, alternating tension. The last laces wound dense between his shoulderblades, a herringbone weave.

Down his side, the ropes as taut as harp strings, her fingers rippling over them.

His head bowed, and clothing melted into place between them.

“I know you have to go,” she said. “I want to see you, as soon as you return.”

He brought her hand to his mouth, and curled his tongue around her finger, a lingering kiss. Lightly, down behind his teeth, she rubbed the tender flesh.

His moan was high, the lines around his eyes pained.

He disappeared.

~

Rumplestiltskin found her in the kitchen, hours later. Edelweiss had woken long before dawn, and refused to sleep again.

Belle was making tea.

He waited until she set down the steaming kettle and pulled her against him, the baby tucked into his arm. There was nothing erotic in the act but his warm support, Edelweiss’ weight transferring seamlessly over to him.

He felt good, and Belle nuzzled into him, her cheek burrowing into the silk at his throat. The hard line of rope over his collarbone came almost as a surprise. Her hand down his side found each one, concealed by the thick material of his waistcoat..

She hadn’t got to see him, but her curiosity was muted under weariness.

He caught her hand.

“You’re tired,” he said. “It will keep.”

Purple smoke ferried them upstairs to their bedchamber; she groaned in complaint. He ignored her, and a moment later she was tucked into bed, her outer clothing banished.

She was asleep when he brought her tea.

~

He was talking to Edelweiss.

Propped in the window seat, their daughter on his knees, Rumplestiltskin’s soft voice (a little higher here) washed over Belle upon waking.

Edelweiss’ baby laugh was not so soft, but a lovely sound nonetheless.

He looked up at the rustle of the bedcovers, and his smile transformed him. Belle wasn’t sure she was all that wonderful when she woke up; he seemed to think differently.

He liked to watch her nurse, endlessly fascinated. He held her between his legs on the sunny window seat, squirming for a moment to adjust the metal he still wore, and propped her arm with his own, his cheek in her hair so he could peer over her shoulder.

He never seemed to tire of it, neither of them nor the position. The terrible Dark One she’d married loved nothing better than this. His other arm wrapped around her stomach, his fingers curling again and again into her chemise. It was a slow, rhythmic motion, almost like a cat’s contented kneading.

When she had turned Edelweiss to the other side, he told her of the trouble that had called him away.

“Did she keep you up?” he asked.

Belle leaned into his cheek. “She doesn’t sleep as well when you are not here.”

He was quiet for a long moment, then,

“Thank you,” he said, and she didn’t know what for.

At her puzzled sound, his fingers curled against her.

“For being my wife, the mother to our daughter--” a whisper so soft she could barely hear it “--and my strength.”

Her hand left Edelweiss’ head to reach up for his hair, sifted the strands between her fingers.

“When I met you, I was only hoping for security,” she confessed.

It seemed so long ago.

He laughed. “Belle, _you_ are my security.”

~

There was a bowl of enormous strawberries in the kitchen downstairs. Rumplestiltskin retrieved it for her and knelt between her feet, his face upturned.

This was a familiar game for them, another way to appease their mutual oral cravings. Never enough, it sometimes seemed more of a torment than a cure.

One hand in his, Belle chose the first berry, held it by its leaves. The fruit full and decadent, she set it between his parted lips.

They formed an O as they wrapped around it, and his tongue pushed back. His curse made his appearance strange; here with her, she could see him.

Grey-green, speckled with gold; the sunlight slanted around her, set him aglow.

“Did you eat yet?”

His eyes closed; he bit the berry from its top, chewed, and swallowed.

They’d had this argument before--he didn’t need to eat as much here. Belle disagreed.

He chose the next. Too big--the juice dribbled down her chin. Up on his knees, and his tongue cleaned it from her.

A tiny kiss to her throat, and he sat back on his heels. A sharp gasp, and he pressed his face into their joined hands.

“Please take it off.”

He never touched the latch, no matter how long she left him in it. She had never forbidden him. She had told him once, in passing, not to come outside of her, and then he had chosen to keep to that. He gave her these things, held nothing back, knelt at her feet and offered her everything he was.

Up again, and the laces of his trousers gave easily under her fingers, the latch making a precise little _click_ as it opened. Formed by magic, the gold still bore the delicate signature of craftsmanship that had been Rumplestiltskin’s trade for a hundred years.

His hand in hers tightened; she sat up to tip his chin. Her eyes on his, sunlight detailed the irises in rich color, his relief as sweet as his pain. She wanted to taste the hunger from his mouth.

The next berry went unchewed from his mouth to hers, then another from her mouth to his.

The berry he chose was held in her mouth, his tongue licking at her lips, stretched around its girth. They could do this, as long as she was the passive party. Once they’d gone too far, his tongue under her lip.

That brief touch had been a torment in itself.

She wanted him.

Too much, it was too good; her mouth trembled.

He stopped, pulled back the berry so that she could bite the smaller tip, his gaze riveted.

The next was just as large, all the way into his mouth. He knew this part of the game as well, and opened for her, further. Too much, too far--his hand still held hers. As long as it did, the game continued.

Too much, too far--she squeezed his hand. He bit, separated the fruit from its top, and breathed through his nose.

She set aside the leaves, touched his cheek. “Slowly, my love.”

His chin, his bulging cheek, the cautious movements. As fascinated as he’d been by her nursing, she watched him struggle now.

He held on to her hand, brought it close to his chest, and worked the oversized berry in his mouth.

The skirt of her chemise was in the way; she pulled it up so that she could spread her knees. The sound he made went straight to her centre--low in his throat, and a sharp breath through his nose.

She knew his patience; he could chew that berry as long as he needed, tiny motions, small swallows. She disrupted him, wrapped her hand around his cock.

He whined, high and short, and swallowed. His hips bucked; his hand squeezed hers.

Around the head, her nail in the slit.

Grey-gold eyes wide, he swallowed frantically. Too much--his hand loosened.

She stopped, held him, his hand and his cock.

Shallow breaths, small swallows. The lines eased from his eyes. From fear to warmth, her nose between his brows.

Almost there. He leaned into her.

Her finger between his lips; the juice leaked down his chin, into the collar of his shirt.

He swallowed, breathed through his nose, and sucked her finger inside.

Behind his teeth, she pulled his head down, until it rested upon her chest.

He whined and swallowed again, but the juices ran down her hand, dripped onto his sleeve. She held him there, berry pulp making a mess of his chin, her hand.

Rumplestiltskin was, his curse aside, one of the most fastidious men she had ever met. He let her do this, but sobbed and swallowed and whined.

Red juice stained their clothing; his legs spread.

He wore buttons much of the time now, complete with buttonholes, because it pleased her. Her hand was sticky on them, the wrist of the hand she held. She could kiss other things, the pulse that lay vulnerable under those buttons.

If she let him up.

Not the lips, stained red, that parted.

Against his skin, “Yes, my Rumple.”

Her endearments did something to him, as if he’d never heard their like before. He ducked his head, and fumbled at the ribbon of her chemise one-handed. The garment slid from her shoulders; his dark nails ghosted down her arm.

She’d got the buttons at his collar undone, released his hand to delve inside, delighted in the tension of rope and muscle.

All the way down his front, buttons slipping from their holes, laces of his waistcoat pulling loose. A little too easily; she pinched his nipple.

He grinned.

Her sleeve snagged at her arm; she let him remove it from her and plunged once more into her exploration.

The other arm--she wanted him, ropes thrumming under her fingers, his sleeves catching at his elbows, fluttering silk.

Her chemise fell about her lap, his waistcoat to the floor. She kept his shirt, the silk soft in her hands, and scooted forward to sit on the edge of the seat.

Light pressure on his shoulders turned him; his chest leaned over her leg. He’d been hard for some time, but he accepted this apparent detour with little complaint.

Rope crossed white down his back, disappeared into his trousers, stark diamonds over mottled flesh. She leaned down to peel the trousers away, left them hanging about his thighs. Her ropes forced the halves of his rear apart, held him open in an obscene display.

Her fingers traced his entrance; he shuddered and moaned and writhed. The shape of the berries jiggled something in her mind, an idea she’d been mulling over. Later, perhaps. For now she lowered him and hooked her heel around his waist, then locked her ankles around him. Silk over hard lines of rope; the contrast of tension and gentle caress. He shivered and burrowed into her, his face in her hip. A high, pleading sound, and pressed closer.

The shirt through the ropes, his arms up behind him. The sleeves around his biceps, the tails under his forearms, the lot tied off into a neat box.

His hair in her fist, she lifted his head, held him tightly between her legs.

Whispered against his lips, “Mine.”

~


	35. Chapter 35

The first time Rumplestiltskin brought her an orphaned baby boy, he shook with anger.

Not quite orphaned, he said, magic coiling under his skin, and more’s the pity. He watched her feed the child, his arms and chin resting on her knees, Edelweiss sleeping in the cradle next to them.

Restless, he bent to press his face against her, then disappeared, purple smoke curling where he’d been.

Down in a dungeon, safe from eyes and ears and precious things, a mismatched collection of ugly crockery shattered, one after another.

~

_Rumplestiltskin_.

He could hear his name wherever it was spoken, part of the magic that tethered him to his dagger, and the words that followed.

His wife’s voice carried a caress, in the same way that sound travelled on the wind, a question. She knew why he kept those dishes, and now she worried.

He appeared in the darkest corner of the expansive hall, his shoulders hunched, his eyes downcast.

She found him there, miserable, his magic for once quiet in the back of his mind.

He begged her without words.

Without words she led him by the hand to her chair before the hearth, and bound his hands behind him with the cord she kept under the cushion.

Their habit of an evening was for reading, the cadence of hers and his writing themselves deep in his memories. Tonight he only listened, and rested his head upon her thigh.

Some time later he woke, unsurprised that he’d fallen asleep. Edelweiss was stirring next to them, curious to find her space shared by another.

Belle’s hand left his hair; he watched her feed their daughter and care for her, then return her to the cradle.

A twitch of his fingers, and it grew broader.

Belle smiled at him.

Returning to the edge of the chair, she leaned forward to hold him close, one arm about his chest, the pads of her fingers roving up and down his back, playing in the texture of his waistcoat.

“Women’s bodies adapt,” she told him, checking under the cords she’d bound him with, a comforting gesture that warmed him, no matter how many times she did it. “If you nurse two, you begin to produce milk for two.”

He’d needed to hear this from her. He thought he asked too much, bringing her into his sordid deals and schemes--trading children, of all things, but she knew him, his insecurities and his fears, and something within him loosened.

“Thank you.”

It wouldn’t take him long to find the child a home. As many who viewed a baby as naught but an extra mouth to feed, there were more who desperately wanted, would give anything for the privilege.

A question and a plea, he whispered, “There will be more, Belle.”

Her hand paused in the centre of his scars.

“Then you’ll have to keep me… what is that phrase? Knocked up.”

He twisted to gape at her. Her eyes danced with merriment, and he buried his face in her thigh, the gold sheath she’d placed on him that morning rudely making its presence known.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he said at last.

Relentlessly, “Wouldn’t keep me knocked up?”

There were few things he wanted more. His cock had begun to ache inside its prison.

“Wouldn’t ask it of you.”

She hummed. “There are many women who would gladly feed a second child in order to be able to provide for their own. Perhaps we can enlist one for that.”

It was not a foreign concept in this land. Maternal mortality was a familiar spectre, and powdered infant formula did not exist.

She kissed his hair. “I’m proud of you.”

No matter how many times she told him, it still bewildered him.

Her touch moved lower, over his wrists, and she brushed the plug in his arse.

He hissed.

“Did it help today?” she asked.

The reminder was all that had stayed his hand. “I nearly killed that man.”

But he hadn’t.

“I _am_ proud of you,” she repeated.

He whined.

“You’re hard.”

Not quite.

~

Anything, the man said. His wife was childless, and well past the age where they might still have hope. He’d been a king once, but a king without a kingdom was only a title.

When it was time, they left Edelweiss with Morraine for an hour and bore the little boy to his new home.

Rumplestiltskin wouldn’t take him from Belle. He’d chosen, but it was she who laid the unnamed child in his adoptive parent’s arms, saw the joy upon their faces, and knew that he would be loved.

This was the very best magic.

Before they left, Belle said hesitantly, “We wanted to give you a gift.”

The woman looked up, her eyes shining damply. “You’ve already given us a gift.”

Belle shook her head. “My husband and I, we’ve been experimenting… to learn magic.”

Light magic, that was.

The couple exchanged a glance, as if a puzzle piece had slotted into place.

Rumplestiltskin touched the boy’s tiny nose, his dark nail careful on the delicate skin. He would always know when this child was safe, just as he knew each of his own. It was the only thing that enabled either he or Belle to walk away.

“Some things come easier,” he said.

They left one of the cradles that he had made behind, inlaid wood on deep cherry, blue and green abalone curling about the edges.

~


	36. Chapter 36

The post in Belle’s rose garden was rough-hewn. He created it from memory and knelt to wait for her, its coarse surface snagging on the back of his trousers.

It chafed at his forearms, folded behind him. Absent was the consuming agony all down his leg--he could do without that. Absent also were the snow and the cold. He could create them, and even feel their bite if he chose, but Belle must not be allowed to feel it.

Nor Edelweiss, content in a cradle nearby.

The swish of Belle’s skirts forewarned him; he looked up, watching for her.

For this.

She paused on the path, her blue eyes soft. She swallowed, walked forward, rope and reticule falling forgotten to the earth.

He turned his face up to see her. Her hand touched his cheek.

“Did you put it on for me?”

Despite the discomfort, he smiled for her, impish. The fear came slower when it had to compete for his attention. _She_ had his attention, straining at his trousers before they’d even started.

Her skirts billowed; she knelt over his knees and laid her cheek against his, unlaced him and drew him out. Drew gasping breaths from him, hard before she touched him. Agony and light, his face in her shoulder.

Gold shone in the sun, cast bright reflections upon her bodice.

His cock in her hand, testing the fit of the ring that encircled him. Her voice in his ear.

“If you can come past this today, I want you to do it, any time you can.”

When she pulled back and raised his chin, he knew his eyes were red with tears.

“You are brave, my Rumple.”

The shock rolled through him, as shattering as the day she’d told him she loved him.

She’d thrown him headlong into orgasm then. He _couldn’t_ come now. His cock throbbed, his fingers digging furrows in his arms.

She tucked his hair behind his ear.

“You are resilient, and you protect your family.”

Her hand on his cock, and he sobbed.

“I love you, Rumplestiltskin.”

It turned out he could come, all over her dress.

Her hand on her lips, then his, lingering. His come on her fingers, salty in his mouth.

She accepted his wrists as though they were something precious, crossed them one over the other, and wrapped them in rope.

The position was different from every other occasion they’d done this.

At his first shiver, she stopped, and clasped his hand. Her cheek on his, his nose in her hair, her other hand on the nape of his neck.

Safe. The cords of his magic settled.

From his neck to his cock, a fleeting touch, and he whined.

Softly, “What kind of rope did they use?”

His fingers tensed. “Hemp,” he replied.

Pure hemp was similar to linen; this had been cheap, blended with straw, fit only for beasts and deserters.

She nodded thoughtfully, and caressed him, over his wrists, his hands, and down the joints of each finger, over and down, until the shiver faded from his muscles and he rested his head on her chest.

Her hand moved to his head, petted him, twined in his curls, and scratched circles on his scalp.

Firmer, the pads of her fingers, and he moaned.

She took up their nylon rope once more, wrapped his wrists in it, her loops within loops, meant to be released at a moment’s notice if need be, the motions familiar, her patterns, the comforting smell of her, the sound of their daughter’s breath.

The slip-knots that had been so much a part of their activities in the other land were less vital here, but the sight of them, their dangling ends, wrote tangible affection over his fear.

He flexed his hands, mapped the constraint she’d placed on him, waited for panic to overtake him, paralyse him. The murmur of the assembled whispered on the edges of memory; nylon laid smooth against his skin. Her finger slid under the ropes, tested their tension.

He was safe.

His magic was his own, quiescent but watchful. It would snap, and he would hurt her. He would not. He would wither to ash before he allowed it to touch her.

They'd hauled him up by his wrists and dragged him, stumbling, into the keep. She drew him to his feet, kissed his knuckles.

“Where, Rumple?”

A deep breath, and he raised his arms to shoulder-height--the height of the ring used for hitching horses.

She’d known, but she still asked him, gave him a chance to change his mind.

She loved him.

Her thumb ran along the line of his teeth; he turned his head and kissed it, his gaze fastened on her mouth.

She tied him to the ring, more loops within loops, tails within his reach.

“Yes?”

He sought her palm with his mouth; her thumb tucked under his lip. She'd chosen him.

They'd let him keep his trousers. She stripped him, the sun warming his bare skin.

A hand on his hip, the other on the rough surface of the post. “Rumple.”

He focused on her with an effort.

“Make this smoother, my love. I'll not have splinters in you.”

She loved him.

A distracted thought, and its finish resembled the staircase bannisters. She petted him--his shoulder, the side of his ribs.

That day and for some time after, his arse had burned with each movement. Belle would not injure him, but she could make him sore in an entirely different way.

She started small, with a plug no larger than her finger, also in gold, meticulously wrought to her specifications, and too short to touch what he wanted it to.

He shifted, and she smiled, tapped the rope about his wrists.

“I’d like you to change this into hemp, please.”

He eyed it, the first she’d ever tied him with, and asked, “Just for today?”

She tucked his hair behind his ear. “Yes, only for today.”

Temporary magic was easier. He could do it with dark magic, but it would be as easy as breathing. To use light magic to accomplish something which so disturbed him went against its very nature.

The first prickle of blended hemp sent him reeling, the magic slipping from his grasp. The rope reverted to nylon in an instant, its texture smooth and familiar.

Her shoulder was just high enough to tuck under his forearm; she reached up to caress the hand furthest from her, over the back and down the joints of each finger, until their tension melted away. Close enough, he twined his other in her hair.

Her hand on the back of his neck anchored him.

She waited, patiently, and it changed.

Giddy with his success, she beamed. “Very good.”

His reward was a larger plug. He burned with the stretch, but it popped inside, his legs spreading to accommodate its girth.

The burn did not linger. His arse full, hemp itching about his wrists, she moved in front of him, and raised her skirts, silver glinting in one hand.

She wore no undergarments; he watched her slide the toy into herself and whined, jealous of his own creation. _He_ wanted to be the one filling her.

How many times had he seen the silver cock sink into his wife’s body? Her face contorted; her teeth gritted. She drew it out and let her skirts fall back into place.

It glistened, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of it. She hadn’t come.

There was a mounting block next to the post; she climbed up onto it, his hair wrapping in her fist.

He could take his eyes off of it; hers burned into his, jewel-bright in the sun. The scent of her arousal so close made his mouth water; he wanted.

She wanted him to ask her.

He’d learned to beg that night, for all the good it did him.

He chose this. She’d chosen him.

“Please, Belle.”

Her eyes soft; she tipped his head back and fed it into his mouth. He lapped at it, eager for more. Further in, more of her in his mouth, in reach of his tongue, and it touched the back of his throat.

He gagged; he couldn’t help it.

She pulled it out.

No, “Please,” he begged. “Please give it back, Belle.”

Her skirts were up about her thighs.

Again, and it was coated with fresh juices. He moaned, but kept it higher in his mouth this time, his tongue working as far up as he dared.

“If you drop it, you’re not getting it back,” she warned him.

The weight of it pushed toward his throat; her hand in his hair loosened. Using his shoulder for balance, she hopped down from the block to dig in her reticule behind him. One hand clasped his ruined ankle, its presence a comforting weight on him, tethering him in the here and now.

Silver in his mouth, gold in his arse, his head tipped back, thin suede trailed up from his knee, a short bundle of soft strips. Over his flank, his hip, cool strands spilled fluttering.

Fear, and his magic waited.

He swallowed, and the toy sunk further, more of her on his tongue.

Suede cracked like thunder in his ears. He whined; his arse clenched. Magic snapped in the pennants overhead, a stiff wind where there had been none.

His hip, her thumb over bone. Unerringly, his cock, circled in gold. Warm linen, curves on his back, his rear, pressure on the plug seated within him. Her skirts swept about his feet, and hid him from the silent crowd.

A squeeze, and he whimpered, high in his throat, the muscles contracting beneath the weight of silver. There was no crowd. Up his vulnerable abdomen, firmly.

Magic fought its leash; he caught it. He caught the fear as well, and coaxed it to his hand.

It danced, uneasy.

The line of his ribs, the shape of his chest. His throat bobbed.

Away.

Suede again, lightly, the sound less startling.

She was pleased with him.

“Give it to me, Rumple.”

He’d got all that he could off of it. His chin down again, he could see her properly.

Bright blue, a pair of wooden clips in hand, the bundled suede tucked under her arm.

His stomach lurched at the sight.

“Belle.”

She stroked his cheek; he pressed into her. He _wanted_.

“Please, Belle.”

He shivered at her touch, her eyes upon his face. His nipple between her fingers, and the first clip bit into him, perpendicular, the pressure resting directly over the tip.

Instinctively, he tried to curl around it. It hurt, and its pain was so very different from that day.

His magic wanted to banish the source; he pushed it back. He healed from the bruising--over and over again, fresh waves that didn't have the sense to fade as they should.

Her hand on his shuddering belly, the scent of her. A lingering caress on his cock.

He whined, begged her. Back to his belly.

“You’re beautiful, my Rumple.”

She circled him, and attached the other clip.

Twin spots of heat, and his hips bucked. Her hand ran soothing down his side.

It didn’t soothe; it inflamed, and he wanted more.

He wanted her mouth, and ducked his head so he wouldn’t have to see.

He couldn’t stay away; her compassionate blue reduced him to begging--

“Belle.”

She switched the plug for the next.

~


	37. Chapter 37

The ball became a tradition every year, soon after Edelweiss’ birthday, well after the spring planting but before harvest would require every available hand in the fields.

“They need to know your face,” Belle insisted. Know it they did, though most seemed to think his appearance only mildly strange.

The lord of the castle was rumoured to possess great magic. It was a secret confirmed by those who were or had once been without wealth.

How he’d come by his magic, that was a subject of rampant speculation.

He’d once been seen speaking with the Blue fairy, they said.

No, he’d eaten strange mushrooms, others claimed.

The closest they came was that he’d killed a dark wizard for his power. The wizard had cursed him, before he’d been defeated.

Many of the girls (they were mostly girls and young women) never told. Who would want anyone to know?

But a few did, and the next year, they brought friends with them, the ones who hadn’t been bold enough before.

The mysterious man returned each year, watching from the gate. Belle and her family left him alone. Pride was a funny thing, and they had decided early that they would rather see someone walk away than give what wasn’t wanted and lose them forever.

And so it went.

~

Rumplestiltskin never let his first trade lapse into disuse. It still pleased him, after all this time, to turn flax or sheared fleece into fine thread and thicker yarn.

One day, when she asked why he spun so much, he replied that there were things that he’d like to forget.

Belle thought that if he wanted to forget them, then surely he wouldn’t want her asking.

He knew her curiosity, though. He shook his head, then touched her cheek in silent apology. “I guess I forgot,” he said. “Sit with me?” he asked hopefully. “I want to show you something.”

He scooted back on his bench to give her room, her skirts swishing between his calves, but instead of beginning whatever it was, he promptly hooked his heels over her ankles and wound himself about her, his lips at her shoulder.

Belle melted into him, his wiry arms wrapped securely around her waist, but--

“ _What_ were you going to show me?”

He snickered, soft puffs of laughter, followed by his tongue, cat-lapping. Teeth.

Belle squeaked.

Rumplestiltskin hummed and nuzzled her. “Sorry, what was that?”

“Did you forget that, too?”

“Hmm, I like this better. Much better.”

“Rumple.”

“Eh.” He shifted reluctantly, picked up the roving which trailed from the flyer’s orifice. His cheek rested next to her ear, and she reached up to pet his hair, fine strands curling about her fingers.

He still favoured the left-side treadle here, a habit from so many years of necessity. There were other spinning wheels, some as tall as she was, their spokes the span of her arms.

 _Whisp-wisp_. Belle could feel his stillness as he focused on the fibre in his hands.

Slowly, it began to change. A glimmer, then strands of pure gold twisted from between his fingers.

Belle touched it after a moment, to see if it were real. Rumplestiltskin paused for her examination, the hooked flyer slowing around the spool. 

“It’s only gold,” he said into her ear.

She turned her head to see him over her shoulder. “Really.”

His chest moved in laughter against her back. He withdrew the strands from the orifice and off the spool, fiddled with them, unravelled them from the wool and separated them.

She watched his hands work deftly, fascinated by him. He tied a few knots in the length, then presented the finished piece to her as though he were a boy with a daisy chain.

She gave him her hand, and he slipped the gold over her wrist. The thready ends tickled her skin in a way that human-forged metal never would.

“Metal should be wiry, shouldn’t it?” she asked. “This feels like your yarn. It’s lovely.”

He shrugged, as if spinning gold were nothing. “It’s an odd use for good wool,” he said. He offered her a shy smile, kissed her hand over her shoulder, “except when it adorns my lady. Then nothing could possibly be worthy of her.”

She stayed there with him for a time, since he seemed to enjoy it so.

“There’s a market I’ve had my eye on that is held today,” he said, some while later, “with a man who sells dyes and dyed goods. Come with me?”

~

Even with his magic, Rumplestiltskin preferred the work of making things the way he had before. He liked it, and Belle never tired of seeing him so content.

They arrived on the outskirts of the town, Edelweiss in Rumplestiltskin’s arms, all of them bundled up against the oncoming winter.

She squirmed right away. “Down, Papa!” She wanted to run and explore, but he admonished her to stay close, her tiny hand clasped in his.

They found the stall with the dyes in short order, greeting the vendor and admiring the bright colours laid out.

Belle fingered a bolt of green fabric, nearly as bright as those in the other land. “Ian would love this, Rumple.”

The vendor watched them, and Edelweiss, who wanted to grasp the pretty things with hands that like any child, weren’t always sure to be clean.

Belle picked her up, and looked to him. She’d been so distracted by the colours before; she blinked in surprise. It was the man from the ball, the one who’d come the last three years, but never entered.

Did Rumplestiltskin know? A glance to him told her that he did, his mouth quirking with the shared knowledge. They held whole conversations this way now. It warmed her that he spoke so with her.

Mine, ours. Belle hugged her daughter. Edelweiss was getting too heavy for her. She passed her to her husband, who held her as though she weighed naught but feathers. Sometimes he forgot, and it looked out of place to others.

Out of the vendor’s line of sight, Belle twitched his sleeve to remind him. Ever so subtly, his posture shifted in response. She let her hand trail down his spine, a fleeting brush of fingers in this public place.

He wasn’t so careful who saw his heated look, their daughter wrapped around his shoulder. She blushed, and turned her back to the man who watched them, examining another shelf of woven fabric.

Rumplestiltskin wore the high collars less around strangers now. She thought Edelweiss might be responsible for that. Her tiny arms coiled about his neck where the stiff material would have blocked her, and she snuggled close.

He shifted her higher and inquired about the green, what was used to make it. The man wouldn’t tell, but offered him a jar of powder, so dark in shade as to be nearly black.

They left with the powder, another in deepest red, and at last learned the man’s name.

A month later, when Edelweiss was staying with Morraine for the day and Ian with them, Ian was invited to assist his grandfather in dyeing a batch of spun yarn, setting the colour and hanging it to dry.

Then they returned to the market.

As Sebastian’s wife had informed their family four years ago, nine was an ideal age for a child to enter an apprenticeship in this land. Ian was approaching his tenth birthday.

He hung back at first, but became animated at the sight of the colours. Jefferson huffed at his enthusiasm, spotted the stains of dye upon his skin (they’d missed some), and told him the secret of the green pigment they’d worked with that morning, the secret he’d refused Rumplestiltskin a few weeks ago.

“My grandson will need to find an apprenticeship soon,” Rumplestiltskin said, his hands settling on Ian’s shoulders from behind.

Jefferson’s eye was drawn by the motion, Rumplestiltskin’s dark nails in marked contrast to the boy’s cream-coloured shirt. He blinked.

Ian reached up to curl his fingers around those of his grandfather’s in a defensive gesture, though his expression remained carefully neutral.

Jefferson offered the boy a small smile. “Come back this afternoon,” he told Rumplestiltskin, “when I’ve closed up shop.”

~

Rows of hutches lined the outside wall of Jefferson’s cottage, housing rabbits of all shades. Grandpa pointed them out to Ian and Grammie. “Angoras!”

Ian recognised the name. “The black fur Dad gave you?” The carved drop spindle that had accompanied it on Grandpa’s wedding day was one of Grandpa’’s most cherished possessions.

“The very same.”

The inside of Jefferson’s home was packed with colour. Ian gaped in awe.

Herbs of every sort were hung to dry, along with scores of dyed skeins. Shelves of jars crowded the walls, each labelled in a scrawling hand that Ian could not read, try as he might.

A sturdy loom with multiple harnesses occupied much of the space, similar to the one Mama used, though not as nice as hers.

And the colours! People here liked colour almost as much as Ian did. Grandpa said they missed it very much.

But now….

Jefferson knew how to make the neatest colours.

Grace, Jefferson’s daughter, was tall. And pretty, but much taller than Ian. Her tea set was special, like Jaime’s blanket that Mama kept, or Grammie’s books.

Jefferson gave him a funny look.

Dad and Mama read books to Jaime and him, even though Ian could read most of them by himself; Grace made tea.

It was good tea; almost as good as Mama’s.

“Grace raises the rabbits,” Jefferson said, when Grace was seated close to him, “but we trade most of the shearings. Herbs and dyes keep us busy; spinning is more than we can handle.”

 _Grandpa spins!_ Ian wanted to say, but he hesitated.

Jefferson saw his hesitation and waited, curious. Ian didn’t know if it was okay. 

Grammie rescued Ian.

“My husband spins” she said.

Grandpa nudged his foot reassuringly. “We haven’t been able to find angoras anywhere.”

“You call them angoras?” Jefferson asked.

“Do you call them something else?”

“Where I am from… no. They’re just rabbits, with long fur.” He changed the subject. “I’ve never taken an apprentice before. I’ve never been in one place long enough to consider it.”

Oh. Ian’s heart sunk.

“Would you consider it now?” Belle asked.

Jefferson glanced at Grace, that talking sort of thing like Grandpa and Mama did this morning. “My daughter is too near in age for your grandson to live with us,” he said.

Oh. Ian didn’t realize how much he wanted _this_ apprenticeship until he’d lost it.

But Grandpa touched his cheek. “My son’s family is rather tied to the industry in their village,” he said. “Would you be willing to relocate?”

Maybe?

Ian gave Jefferson his very best pleading look. There was a long moment before Jefferson said, “It... wouldn’t be the first time I’ve packed up shop.”

He looked to his daughter, who smiled. Her smile was pretty, too.

“My home is wherever you are, Papa.”

Ian liked Grace.

Jefferson turned his attention back to Ian. That funny look was back.

“What is your family’s trade?”

“Horses, sir,” Ian replied softly.

Jefferson studied him, intrigued, maybe. “Already?”

“We’ve been working to restore some of the trades that were lost, these last years,” Grandpa said. “Equinox is one of many such villages throughout the realm.”

It was Grace who asked, “Might we visit?”

~

Jefferson knew the names of every plant, tree, and fungus in the realm--and maybe some outside.

Ian got blue up to his elbows that winter, and it wouldn’t come off. He didn’t mind, but Jefferson laughed and sent Grace and him with a basket of herbs to help a neighbor make soap.

Jefferson never wore colours on his hands. Ian thought he was missing half the fun.

Sheep were rare here; goats were not. The woman who made soap had a daughter the same age as Evan. Emma was out with David today, but Ian and Grace were old enough for this, Snow said.

Snow made them both stand way back for the first part, while she added a foul-smelling liquid to an enormous cauldron containing milk from her goats. Ian wasn’t sure what was so scary about the stuff (other than the smell) until the snow underneath started to melt.

But there was no fire!

Then Snow asked them to bring her more snow, and Snow packed the snow around the cauldron. She said they needed it to keep the milk from scorching.

“Is that how you got your name?” Ian wanted to know.

But Snow said, “I am quite certain my mother never made soap in her life.”

Then they got to mix in the other stuff.

Emma came back with James as they were cleaning up. Emma said Ian’s blue skin was the coolest thing ever. More or less. She talked really fast.

James put Jefferson’s dye on a shelf way up high.

The soap had to ‘cure’ overnight, so Ian and Grace went back in the morning, and Snow showed them how to cut it into bricks.

Then it had to cure some more. For almost two months.

The next time Ian saw James, it was as though a different man occupied the same body. His hair had also grown down past his shoulders.

Maybe he was a wizard, like Grandpa, but if Ian didn’t know better, he would have thought James had never seen him before. Snow greeted Ian by name, smiling at the man as if there were some secret joke that they weren’t telling Ian.

The angora fur found its way into Grandpa’s storerooms, a portion of the finished skeins into the big pots of dye that Jefferson taught Ian and Grace to make.

It was an old arrangement, Grandpa said.

~

That spring, Jefferson attended their ball as gaily dressed as any of the other guests.

Grace had begged to come, but her father denied her. ‘Next year,’ he promised her, ‘if it’s safe.’

Her second pregnancy just beginning to show, Belle greeted Jefferson warmly. She and her husband were so happy he could come, she told him.

Another guest approached then, her hand holding that of a younger woman.

She had come the first year, been one of those who would have turned back. Belle recognised her, and drew Jefferson into the shadows behind Rumplestiltskin.

“Watch,” she whispered. “They can’t see us here.” She left him there, and returned to her husband’s side.

Rumplestiltskin bowed formally over the woman’s roughened fingers. The younger looked on, cautiously hopeful.

Belle kissed the younger woman’s cheek in warm greeting, “Welcome,” she said. “We didn’t get your name, before,” she addressed the elder of the two.

The two exchanged glances. “Tink,” the elder said. “My sister, Nova.” She paused. “Blue… she doesn’t know we’re here. I hope. She wouldn’t approve.”

Rumplestiltskin stiffened. “You’re fairies,” he accused them.

“We’re not fairies without dust,” Tink argued. “We’ll be years getting the mines back to capacity.”

Belle laid her hand on his arm. “Why are you here?”

Tink twisted her fingers, glancing around as though the Rhuel Gorem would appear at any moment and discover them. “We wanted to check up on someone. Before you came here, I met a man who’d lost his wife. I… I introduced him to his true love.”

“Blue was angry when she found out,” Nova said. “The woman was already married to her first true love.”

“One can have two?” Belle asked, stunned.

“Oh! Oh yes,” Tink said. “It’s not supposed to happen, which was why....” She swallowed and looked away.

Nova shivered. “She took Tink’s wings.”

Tink shot her a look. “I’ve got them back now,” she defended the Rhuel Gorem.

Rumplestiltskin’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘not supposed to happen?’”

“She said it wasn’t fair,” Nova whispered.

“Fair?” he repeated blankly.

Tink shifted, one foot to the other. “He wasn’t supposed to know. None of them were.”

“Would she… keep it from them?” he asked.

Neither of the fairies answered. Belle thought perhaps they’d said more than they’d intended to.

Belle sighed. “Is this someone we know?”

“The man I met has a tattoo, here,” Tink gestured, “They work with horses, in Equinox.”

“Oh, Regina!” Belle exclaimed. “Yes, she’s the one in mauve.” The colour was Jefferson’s work. No one here had known how to make it, four years ago.

Speaking of… she became aware of how strange their conversation must sound.

She took the hand of the younger woman, though there was really no telling a fairy’s age, and turned to her husband. “Pale rose?”

The textiles they chose became finer every year as the land grew more prosperous. While not nearly the extravagance Belle had known, these were subtler. She rather thought her husband had better taste.

The magic was becoming easier each year, and Rumplestiltskin’s skill grew. White light swirled freely now, leaving the dustless fairy gowned in delicate pink with touches of bolder colour.

“Lovely,” Belle said, squeezing his hand.

“I liked the green,” Tink said to Rumplestiltskin, not at all remorseful over having slipped in under their notice three years before. “Please?”

Bemused at the fairy’s boldness, Belle shook her head, stepped back and slid her arm around her husband’s waist. 

The first attempt was a clumsy, artless thing, a neon horror that Ian would have loved.

“Rumple-stilt-skin!”

Nova’s eyes were very wide. She covered her mouth with her hands.

Rumplestiltskin sighed, put-upon. The second was better, done in hues more suited to this land. Nova spotted the row of cutesy bows down Tink’s back and said not a word.

A small smirk danced upon Rumplestiltskin’s lips. Belle knew when to pick her battles.

“Midnight, and the magic’s gone,” she warned the fairies, and sent them on their way.

~

“Would that have been me?” Jefferson asked, when the two had gone inside.

“The green?” Rumplestiltskin asked innocently.

“The green was lovely.”

Oh yes, they’d picked a good one for precocious Ian.

“You didn’t want it,” Belle said.

His glance was sharp. “You knew I was there?”

“Every year,” Rumplestiltskin admitted.

“I came to this la--realm for Grace,” he said. “We might not be wealthy here, but she’s happy.”

“She is,’ Belle assured him, wondering at his slip, “and we _are_ so glad you have come tonight.”

He studied them, his gaze flicking uncertainly between the two of them, before he nodded.

~

The treaty protected Belle’s family from external threats, but not from themselves.

When a boy made a pass at Jaime that night, Rumplestiltskin nearly killed him.

Too ignorant to know the true danger, foolish enough to attempt it in the gardens of the girl’s own family home, the boy still had enough sense to leave off when someone else showed up.

He paled, stumbling back at her father’s fury in the torch-lit gardens.

“What is going on here?” Rumplestiltskin demanded, coming up behind Baelfire.

Jaime wouldn’t look at them. She held her wrist as though it hurt.

“What’s this?” Baelfire asked, taking her hand. Finger-shaped bruises were already beginning to form on her skin.

“I’m okay, Daddy.”

Baelfire looked from the ugly marks to his daughter’s tears, and lunged at the boy, knocking him to the ground.

“Daddy, no!”

Drawn by Jaime’s shout, Belle emerged from the ballroom onto the terrace, followed by Wendy and many of the other guests.

The boy’s nose streaming blood, Baelfire hauled him to his feet and shook him. “She’s _fourteen_ , you ass!”

The guests looked on, Jefferson and the two fairies in pink and green among them. Wendy drew Jaime aside, inspecting her wrist.

The boy babbled, until his voice (and his air) was abruptly cut off.

Rumplestiltskin’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Don’t. bother.” He held up a hand roiling with dark, seething magic.

Baelfire turned his head, as though coming out of a daze. “Papa?”

Things moved very fast, then.

He tossed the boy from them and grabbed Rumplestiltskin’s wrist. A different kind of smoke began to curl from their skin, and time seemed to slow.

Rumplestiltskin’s eyes took in the sight, the irises nearly black and obscuring the whites from corner to corner. His nose flared at the smell of burning flesh.

The dark magic disappeared. He staggered, as though whatever had taken over him left him winded at its departure.

“Bae?”

His hand shook. He peeled Baelfire’s fingers away to find them pale and going grey where they’d made the most contact, blistering around the edges of the charred area.

Baelfire hissed, but didn’t pull away. His smile was pained. “We said we wouldn’t let you go, didn’t we?”

Rumplestiltskin cradled his hand. “May I?” he asked.

At Baelfire’s nod, white light bloomed from their hands, restoring what the dark magic had damaged.

Rumplestiltskin kissed the centre of Baelfire’s palm, curled his hand into a fist and laid it against his cheek.

“I just got my parental comeuppance, huh?” Baelfire asked, as the crowd dispersed and Wendy led Jaime away.

The boy had fled. The crowd’s censure ensured he would not be showing his face in public for some time.

Rumplestiltskin’s mouth quirked.

Subdued, Baelfire said, “I didn’t understand before, how much you loved me. Still don’t, but now I’ve got my own, and I would do anything for them. I wanted to skin him, too.”

~

Poor Jaime was feeling distinctly set upon.

“There’s a reason young women don’t go off by themselves here, darling,” Wendy said.

Belle thought Jaime would have made a noise about being able to decide for herself, but….

“Didn’t they, where we came from?”

Snow frowned, puzzled.

Belle and Wendy exchanged glances.

“Jaime, do you remember when Rum shot that bear?” Wendy asked.

Jaime nodded slowly. “It was just before we left. I only heard about it.”

Wendy sighed. “Do you think your grandfather--as he was then--could have stopped the bear if he hadn’t been carrying that weapon?”

Jaime had been nine at the time, but she remembered. “Most people wouldn’t have been able to.”

“Most of us,” Belle said pointedly, “wouldn’t have a chance of stopping a cad like the one who almost died tonight.”

Indignantly, Jamie demanded, “What am I supposed to do, then? Stay cooped up all the time?”

Snow shifted, then reached for the shoulder of her lovely gown. A blade appeared in her hand, short but wickedly sharp.

She offered it to Jaime, hilt-first.

Wendy snorted. “We’re not fainting flowers, dear,” she said blandly. “We just have to learn to use the right tools.”

“Geez, don’t run with knives, auntie,” Jaime said, taking it gingerly from Snow.

Snow’s smile was grim. “Why should we run when we don’t have to?”

They turned as they heard Baelfire and Morraine approach. He looked tired and worried. Morraine’s spine was poker-straight, an uncanny evenness to their steps. He stopped when he spotted the small knife in Jaime’s hand.

“New jewellry?” he asked, puzzled.

Snow arched one raven’s-wing brow at him.

“It fits under clothing,” Jaime said. “Isn’t it neat?”

Morraine smiled at her daughter's enthusiasm.

Baelfire eyed the knife warily, but shook his head. “Won’t be enough.”

“I could teach her how to use those,” Snow offered.

Baelfire blinked. “Do what now?” he asked skeptically, stepping back from Wendy and turning to Snow.

She smirked. A moment later he was on the ground, the flat of a second blade pushing at the thick collar of his doublet, his arm up behind him.

“Ooof,” he said belatedly.

“Uncle,” Snow demanded.

He tried to throw her off. Her knee dug into his back; her grip on his arm didn’t budge.

He winced. “I give, I give!”

He was grinning when she let him up. The knife disappeared into her bodice.

Jaime tested the edge of the blade she held, then turned to Snow, naked avarice in her eyes.

“Where did you learn that?” she wanted to know.

“A friend.” Something sad crossed over Snow's face. “A very dear friend.” She took the knife from Jaime and sheathed it opposite its twin. “Meet me tomorrow at the crossroads?”

Jaime nodded eagerly, but--

“What…?”

Snow smiled.

“Watch my daughter for me some evening,” she said. “One hour of lessons, one hour of childcare.”

“You just want me to babysit?” Jaime asked uncertainly.

“Baby… oh no, she’s five,” Snow said. “Much more trouble. Girl’s gotta get away with her men sometime. Emma is old enough now that we’d like to be alone on occasion.”

Jaime blushed, but, “One hour, one student; four hours, four students,” she countered.

~

Jefferson found Rumplestiltskin later that evening, perched precariously on the high edge of the outer wall, staring out into the night.

Up here, the only light reflected from the torches below. He leaned on the stone, his taller frame bringing their heights almost even.

“That was dark magic.” His tone held no censure, only curiosity.

Rumplestiltskin slowly turned his head. “What makes you think that?” he asked, from under the hood that obscured much of his face. The nights were still cool, this high in the mountains, the sun blocked from its hollows for much of the day.

Jefferson shrugged, squinting at him in the dimness. “I get around.”

“Do you?” Rumplestiltskin asked him softly. “And where, exactly, do you get around?”

Jefferson didn’t answer that directly, but gave up on trying to see him properly and said, “I came to this land because I thought it would be better for Grace.”

Rumplestiltskin raised an eyebrow, but didn’t reply.

“Is it better for Grace, here?” he pressed.

“I don’t know,” Rumplestiltskin admitted. “Perhaps you would be better served by asking my family.”

“Would I?”

“They think better of me than they should, but don’t tell Belle that, she’ll have my hide.”

Jefferson hoisted himself up onto the wall, whistling at the sight of the drop below them. “Ye gods, man.”

Rumplestiltskin snorted.

“I’ve never seen anyone use both light and dark magics.”

“They do tend to be mutually exclusive, don’t they?”

Jefferson was quiet, then, “Sometimes Ian says things that make me think that Grace and I aren’t the only ones who have known other lands.”

“He likes you, then?”

“Your lad’s discreet,” Jefferson said dryly, “but the names he uses aren’t always the same as others here. Do you know the other day he called a brown colour ‘chocolate?’”

Rumplestiltskin winced. “Those trees aren’t due to bear fruit for several years,” he muttered.

Jefferson laughed. “You brought them over, then?”

“Just seeds.”

“People in this land will think you’re the local narcotics dealer.”

“Better that than some things.”

A humming reply. “There are other things one could be known for, yes.” A moment and, “You look different, out here.”

Rumplestiltskin turned to face him directly, a small smile on his lips. It was as though a shadow had fallen over him since last they’d met.

His vision adjusted to the night, Jefferson took in the heavy texture of his skin, the eyes that seemed recessed in caverns, the deep stains on his teeth where they had been fewer.

“You don’t see me much without my family, do you?” Rumplestiltskin asked.

“You didn’t dance with anyone else tonight. I’m sure there are a few ladies who are greatly disappointed.”

A quirk of the mouth. “I was busy.”

“And it's a grand night,” Jefferson replied. He hopped from the ledge and spun about, the tails of his frock playful with drama. “My Grace wanted to come. She is quite unhappy with me.”

It was almost an apology.

Rumplestiltskin tilted his head in acceptance. “After the ball, our family gathers. Stay with us, if you would.”

Jefferson bowed. “It would be my honor.”

~

Their number had grown, since the first time they’d done this. Michael was with the children tonight, the short straw in an ever-expanding circle.

Ian was old enough to stay up with them now, though nearly asleep on his feet.

“Jefferson,” Belle said. There was a parting, a shifting of bodies, and the man on the edge of the crowd approached, puzzled.

Rumplestiltskin looked up, his smile open, not a sign of his curse in sight.

Surprise flared in Jefferson’s eyes; they flicked around at the number gathered.

Belle held out her hand through the throng. “I’d like you to meet my husband.”

~

Lessons progressed, and Jaime chafed. She wanted her privacy, she said.

Baelfire told her, “When you can fend me off, then you can go where you please. Deal?”

They had to work out the details first.

She read the fine print.

So did he.

Not so long after, she knocked him on his butt.

~

Every year when their guests departed, they welcomed new family, by marriage, by birth, and more commonly as the years passed, by friendship.

By the time they approached their eighth year, their numbers had swelled to the outer corners of the ballroom.

Soon Edelweiss assisted in the game at the south gate.

A few years later, she tried it herself.

~


	38. Epilogue

“True love can break any curse,” Rumplestiltskin said sadly.

Frederick looked as though he would have rolled his eyes in exasperation if he thought it polite to do so.

“Well, yes!” he cried, a perilous hair from sounding as if he were speaking to the village idiot. “But she’s….” he gestured helplessly.

“So you can’t kiss her… because there’s a barrier in the way?” Rumplestiltskin asked slowly, something in him lighting up with excitement. Could it be?

Frederick nodded. _What in the nine realms?_ his expression seemed to say.

Rumplestiltskin might have been a bit brisk with the man after that. Lake Nostos was over there, that way, he told him. Get the water, dump it on your princess. Good luck.

He only realised much later that he’d forgotten to demand anything of the man in trade.

Not that it mattered.

He surprised Belle in their library that very evening, barely after the children were abed, crowding her up against a window and kissing her soundly.

For a moment she forgot herself. She dropped her book to the floor and kissed him back, her arms winding sweetly around his neck.

Then her eyes opened, as if waking.

“Rumple, no!” She pushed him off of her, held him at arm's length.

He tried to pout at her--he did, but he couldn’t stop himself from grinning madly, as smug as he’d ever been. He wanted to kiss her again.

She lifted a shaking hand to his mouth, traced it. He opened for her, his tongue teasing at her fingers. He wanted more.

“Rumple?” she squeaked. She had questions, he could see them, but he didn’t want to stop.

He pressed her to the tall window and claimed her mouth, sending a burst of magic into the glass to strengthen it. He’d never meant it to withstand any real force.

It was just a window.

It was the surface he wanted to fuck his wife against.

His ever-curious (horny) wife.

She turned them, pinning his wrists to the cool glass by his shoulders, his trousers straining against her front.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

He whimpered; his hips arched. She rocked against him, bit his eyebrow near his temple.

He whined.

“Tell me.”

He hadn’t the composure to do so. His magic boiled just under his skin, made the candle flames dance.

She saw it, saw the reflection of wayward fire in the glass.

“I think we need to work on your control more,” she threatened.

The draft died. He pulled the magic inside himself with a pained groan, closing his eyes. His chin came up to bare his throat.

“Please, Belle.”

She set her teeth into his jaw, biting at him, raw marks that faded as soon as they appeared.

He panted with the pain, ground into her, her delicate hands holding him where she wished him to stay.

She sighed, her eyes softening. ”We’ve no visitors tonight, do we?”

He tilted his head, listening. “No,” he said, when all that he found was the patter of raccoon feet and the distant bark of a fox. His magic quested further than sound; nothing human stirred outside their homes within an hour’s walk. “No visitors.”

Belle nodded, releasing his wrists and pulling his head down to her. His fingers buried in her hair; his mouth sought hers. She kept the kiss slow, made him keep pace with her, her nails scratching at his scalp.

She leaned her forehead against his, her blue eyes fond. “Take our clothes off, Rumplestiltskin.”

He paused, and she smiled. “My way.”

It was always more difficult to do it her way, especially when all he wanted was to rip their clothing to shreds.

White light bathed her skin and his, welling up in him as he closed his eyes. When they stood naked as the day they were born, his cock tickled by her curls, he looked to her for her approval.

“Very good,” she praised him. “I am so proud of you.”

“Please, Belle?”

“Yes, you can tell me later.”

She kissed him, no longer slow or languid. She tasted of tea and scones, orange marmalade and tart cranberries.

He turned her back to the window, the smooth glass warmed by his time against it. She melted into him, urged him to haste. He obeyed her eagerly, lifting her against the smooth surface and lowering her onto his cock.

She sighed in pleasure, her abdomen rippling, her arms and legs wrapping him in her embrace. He knew how after all this time, how to please her, how to draw the sweetest cries from her lips. He’d found her as eager a student as he.

Sweat dripped down their bodies, the movement of his cock within her making obscene sounds in the quiet of their library, their skin leaving smudges on the glass that slipped and slid without friction against their flesh. 

She giggled and kissed him, arching into him and finding the friction she needed against him, gasping into his mouth when he reached between them. Her stuttered groan fed him; she trembled, her legs clenching around him as he emptied himself into her, her insides milking him of his orgasm.

She murmured nonsense into his ear as he caught his breath, lowering them to the floor, his knees against the cool glass, his arms around her shoulders to keep her bare skin from it.

He could feel himself slipping out of her, but she seemed in no hurry to move, holding him as he rested against her, carding her fingers through his hair for a long while.

“Now will you tell me?” she asked.

He huffed a laugh against her ear. “Thank you.”

Her fingers dug into his scalp and he pulled back to look at her, his semen sticky between them. He closed his eyes for a moment, light magic cleaning the unpleasantness away.

Her smile warmed him down to his toes.

~

He was alone when he heard it.

“Rumplestiltskin.” The whisper danced across his senses.

In a moment he stood on a sandy beach, where a fully-mermaid Ariel lay in the surf, Eric sitting in the water with her. Eric cradled her head in his lap, her silver-blazed tresses drifting with the waves. His short doublet was soaked to the waist, a cool wind gusting down from the dunes.

Eric looked up anxiously at Rumplestiltskin’s footsteps, as though he’d been listening for him.

Rumplestiltskin waded into the shallow water, heedless of the damp that soaked through his boots, or swamped his trousers when he knelt beside them.

“My father died,” Ariel said, her faded peridot-green fins flicking at the foam. Her eyes were rimmed in red, as though she’d been crying. She held a light shawl about her shoulders, more for Eric’s comfort than hers. “I knew it would be soon, but I didn’t want to leave him while….” She looked away. “So I got stuck.”

Rumplestiltskin cast a hand over her, a bright white sparking like static in the space between his skin and hers. He sighed.

“I can’t change you back,” he said. “The price of the second course of magic would be too high.”

“Then let me pay it,” Eric pleaded. He had gone bald on top, his bare scalp beginning to burn in the mild autumn sun.

“The price would be your life,” Rumplestiltskin denied him.

Eric soothed his suddenly tearful wife, his fingers tangling gently in the hair at her back. “I’m not leaving you,” he assured her. He looked at Rumplestiltskin speculatively. “Can you change me?”

“Eric?” Ariel grasped his hand, knobbly fingers twining with his. “What of the kingdom?”

“We never had children,” Eric explained, stroking Ariel’s bare lower back. “I suppose we were too different.”

“My family and I,” Rumplestiltskin said gravely, “we owe Ariel and her sisters more than we can ever repay. Yes, I can change you.”

Eric nodded, already eyeing the waves that shone on the horizon. Ruefully, he said, “We never chose a successor, either. It was foolish. We always thought we had more time.” He shook himself, his gaze snapping back to Rumplestiltskin. “Will you ensure that my people are safe?”

Rumplestiltskin drew back in astonishment. “Surely you do not wish _me_ to take your place? I’m hardly--”

Eric cut off his burgeoning panic with an outstretched hand. It was spotted with age, and beginning to shiver. “Or find someone,” he suggested. “Whoever you choose, my people will follow. I will do whatever I can to ensure a peaceful transition. Only, please,” he begged, “I don’t want to be separated from my wife.” 

After a moment, Rumplestiltskin calmed. He gathered his feet under him, saltwater pouring from his clothing.

He offered Eric a hand, and Eric climbed to his feet, staggering stiffly in the sand. Eric tensed, suddenly defensive, when Rumplestiltskin squatted to lift Ariel from the water.

Outwardly unperturbed, Rumplestiltskin looked up at him from his crouch, Ariel’s spine bony and prominent against his arm. 

“It’s all right,” Ariel said.

“I will not separate you,” Rumplestiltskin promised him.

A reluctant nod from Eric, and a moment later found the two men standing in a grassy meadow, the sound of voices nearby. Rumplestiltskin shifted the elderly mermaid against his chest, then dried his and Eric’s clothing with a thought.

“Grandpa!” Evan called. He streaked down the beaten-earth path, his older brother close behind.

“Hold, lads!” Rumplestiltskin cried. He smiled to see them. Evan and Ian slowed, approaching at a more sedate pace.

“Why is auntie Ariel all fishy today?” Evan asked.

“She was always fishy, Evan. Is your father about?”

Baelfire, drawn by the noise, rounded the corner of the house.

“Papa? What’s going on?” he asked. “Eric! Come in.” He opened the door and ushered them inside.

Morraine looked up as they entered, setting down her shuttle and rising to greet them. “Ariel! Eric, welcome.” She eyed Ariel in Rumplestiltskin's arms, and Eric, who slumped with fatigue. “Rum, Jaime’s room is available if you’d like.”

“You don’t have to go in a bathtub, Auntie?” Evan asked.

Ariel flicked her fins at him. “Being dry won’t hurt me,” she said with a weary chuckle.

Rumplestiltskin carried Ariel to Jaime’s old bedroom, still kept for times she and her husband visited. Eric peeled back the covers, rich with wool and furs. Rumplestiltskin set Ariel into the bed, then stopped Eric when he would have followed him from the room.

“You were in the water for too long,” he said. “I must speak with my son. We will come to get you when you are needed.”

“Thank you,” Eric said. “I’m sorry. I was worried.”

Surprised, he shook his head. “You had every right to be. Sleep. We will come for you soon.”

~

“Eric wants to step down,” Rumplestiltskin told his son over a cup of Morraine’s tea. He’d sent off a dove to carry a note for Belle, telling her that he would be late getting back that evening.

They were all seated near the fire now, the autumn nights turning cold. The four clustered tightly around him--Evan, the smaller of the brothers, claiming the spot closest to his grandfather, Morraine and Baelfire sharing a thick blanket trimmed in sun-bright orange. The badly-healed bones in Rumplestiltskin's foot ached, a negligible price for the respite from his curse that his family offered.

Baelfire tilted his head. “He has no children. Who will replace him?”

“He asked me to find someone who will keep his people safe.” Rumplestiltskin was still puzzled over that request, and the trust it implied. He looked to Baelfire.

“I once offered you a crown, many years ago.”

Longer for Baelfire than for him. A twist of his mouth, and a similar crown hung from his free hand, a big ugly monstrosity that no one in their right mind would truly want to wear. 

Baelfire scowled, his nose flaring as though he’d found something distasteful on his boot. Ian snorted.

Rumplestiltskin shrugged and tossed the crown over his shoulder into nothingness. He sighed, wiped that hand down his face, disoriented for a moment at the unfamiliar smooth texture of his skin.

“I know better now,” he said. He met his son’s inquisitive gaze. “A crown is not something to be desired, but to be borne. I wanted more than anything to make you happy then.”

“Oh Papa.” Baelfire shook his head. He reached across to clasp Rumplestiltskin’s hand and hold it tightly. “I just wanted you.”

Rumplestiltskin's gaze fell to his son's hand, his cursed heart nearly unable to bear the brightness that drove back the shadows of his curse.

They never had let him go, and perhaps… they never would.

~


End file.
